


Always Right Together

by hdarchive



Category: Glee
Genre: (Kurt's mom), Alternate Universe - Childhood Friends, Bullying and Homophobia, Heavy Angst, M/M, Minor Character Death, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-14
Updated: 2017-02-10
Packaged: 2018-09-08 12:53:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 35,605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8845846
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hdarchive/pseuds/hdarchive
Summary: Kurt and Blaine have been in love for sixteen years. They've only been alive for eighteen.





	1. 5-15

**Author's Note:**

> Wow. So, where to begin? Sorry, this is going to be a long author's note.
> 
> This story is about Kurt and Blaine starting out as best friends, and growing through the years together. It follows major elements of canon (the events of Karofsky will take place) but not all, as some elements were left out. I didn't want to rewrite the entire show. It's a pretty heavy story, and delves a lot into Kurt's mind and how things affect him and how hard he struggles. It might not be an easy read for some. Warning: Blaine also has a relationship with someone who isn't Kurt at one point.
> 
> I've been working on this for two years. I came up with the idea a long time ago, wrote out the notes for ages 5-16, then abandoned it. It wasn't until last October that I came back to it, right when I needed to write but didn't know how to anymore, and put the notes into actual words. Writing this helped heal my heart and mind, helped me realize that I was still able to write exactly when I thought I never would be able to again. This story is very close to my heart.
> 
> It's also not finished. I've been picking at it since October 2015, and currently have it at around 80k. I know how it'll end, and I desperately want to get there. But recently, I've found a new fandom, a new ship to write for, and Kurt and Blaine feel very distant now. I know for a fact it won't stay that way, because 6 years can't fade that quickly. So I'm posting this now, so I can make a promise to come back and finish. After this chapter, there's still thousands of more words to be published, and thousands more to be written. I will finish this story, I promise. But it's been inside my head and in my google docs for over a year now, and I really want to share it, and say thank you, to everyone who's stuck with me through everything (and has stuck with me through my Eyewitness craze).
> 
> Just another side note: this was all written over a year ago, and my style has changed a lot since then, so this is all sort of unfamiliar to me. There's probably several glaringly obvious errors. Sorry. Thanks to everyone who's read this beforehand and gave me feedback on it. Thanks to anyone who's reading it now.

**Five**

His mom loved love.

He remembers this, because she never stopped listening to love songs. He’s pretty sure his first sentence was ‘ _Take my hand, take my whole life, too’._

So naturally, he loved love, too. All the movies, all the shows, all the sappy soap operas that played in the background as he’d sit on the floor and colour or read.

She listened to Bryan Adams the most. He didn’t understand what most of the words meant, but that one song - the ‘Everything I do’ song - was his favourite.

Mostly because Blaine knew almost all the lyrics, and Blaine sounded good when he sang it.

Mostly because, even if Kurt didn’t know what the song meant, after it was finished and after Blaine was done singing, he’d look at Kurt and smile and say, “I love you just like that, but more.”

-

Love is what the people on TV feel, that’s what Kurt knows. Like Ariel and Eric, or Cory and Topanga, or Bo and Hope Brady. Or what his dad feels for his mom, or what his mom feels for his dad.

It’s in the songs and the words, and it’s a good thing, but that’s all he knows.

And if Blaine loves him like they do on TV, or in the songs, then Kurt thinks he loves him back.  
Because being in love must mean being somebody’s best friend. The bestest of best friends, a friend that no other person could replace. And that’s what Blaine is to him.

He must love Blaine back, because there’s a mess of construction paper and glue on the ground, little cut up bits of red and pink spread across the carpet, and glitter in his hair. The card is taking forever, but it has to be perfect, it can’t be like the others.

His mom sits next to him, picks off the glitter from his forehead as he works. “Beautiful cards, Kurt,” she says, eyeing the neat arrangement of completed cards set to the side. “Who’s the one with all the glitter for?”

Kurt gives her a look so hard his eyes hurt, and continues to strategically place a sticker along the border.

“Blaine, obviously.”

She kisses the top of his head and laughs. “He’s going to love it.”

-

**Six**

Grade one isn’t like kindergarten. He already knows this, because his mom had to buy him different kinds of school supplies.

Also, there’s going to be more kids. Kids he doesn’t know, and kids who don’t know him.

He doesn’t want to go. He begged his mom all last night to not make him go, to let him stay home, to give homeschooling a try because he really really can’t be with other kids because the other kids won’t like him.

She made him go anyways, so right now he’s mad at her.

And scared. Really scared.

The second his mom left he wanted to cry and hide, but then Blaine was there.

Blaine’s a lot better with the other kids. He says hi to everyone, even the kids he doesn’t know.

It’s like he knows Kurt’s scared, because when he finds him in the cubby room he gives him a big hug, bigger than a normal hug.

“Hi, Kurt,” Blaine says, arms up around Kurt’s neck. “I like your new shoes, they’re really nice.”

Kurt hugs Blaine back, doesn’t really want to let go. His voice is small and quiet as he says, “Thanks, Blaine. I like your bowtie.”

Blaine pulls back and beams, eyes flashing down to the red and yellow bowtie. “Thanks! I tied it all by myself!”

He looks down at his shoes, wondering if they’re really that nice, or if Blaine’s just trying to make him feel better. He wonders if the other kids will like his shoes.

It’s not even that he wants them to, because all that matters is that _he_ likes his shoes, he just wants the other kids to be nice to him.

“Blaine,” Kurt says, eyes still on his shoes, afraid to take another step forward. “I don’t want to go inside.”

Blaine frowns, eyes looking confused. “Why not?”

He kicks at the ground, hands fiddling behind his back, close to crying when he says, “Because what if the other kids think I’m weird?”

Blaine laughs like Kurt just told the funniest joke. “They won’t!”

“You don’t know that, Blaine!” Kurt cries, finally looking up. “They’re gonna make fun of me, I just know it.”

“ _You_ don’t know that, Kurt.” Blaine reaches up, puts his hands on Kurt’s shoulders and shakes him, says right up in Kurt’s face, “And you’re not weird, you’re different.”

He has to smile a little, just a bit, because he knows he’s different, because no other kid in the world would pick these shoes but he loves these shoes.

But it doesn’t make him any less scared.

“Nobody likes different.”

Blaine shakes his head and says, “Well, I do.”

Kurt looks up and smiles harder, eyes quickly darting away as he feels his cheeks turn pink. He whispers, trying really hard to stay brave, “Nobody’s going to want to be friends with me.”

Blaine shakes his head again, hands still on Kurt’s shoulders. “But I do.”

And for the first time all day, the heavy feeling of fear leaves his chest.

-

The lightning doesn’t usually scare him, but the thunder does.

They watch the storm from the shelter of the porch, their clothes soaked and feet cold from jumping in puddles. He knows his mom hates it when he gets his clothes dirty but he can’t help it, because he kind of forgets about rules and stuff when he’s with Blaine.

Blaine grabs his hand when the thunder gets louder, and Kurt wonders if he’s holding it because he’s scared, or because he knows Kurt is.

“Do you think the power will go out?” Kurt asks, squeezing Blaine’s hand back.

Blaine scoots closer along the porch until he’s shoulder to shoulder with Kurt. “I hope not.”

The sky is all kinds of grey and blue. It almost looks pretty, could be pretty, if the sounds weren’t so scary.

“What do you think makes the thunder?” he asks, because Blaine always knows the answer to everything.

Blaine turns to him and smiles wide, pointing up at the sky and its many many clouds. “Cooper says it’s the dragons roaring.”

Kurt rolls his eyes, because Cooper says a lot of things that aren’t true. “There can’t be any dragons, Blaine. Wouldn’t we see them?”

“They only come out when it’s cloudy, Kurt,” Blaine says like it’s obvious. “But they’re really nice. Cooper says they roar to scare away the rain.”

It sounds like the time Cooper told them that marshmallows come from hay, or that Disney asked him to be the model for Prince Eric. Completely made up and it can’t possibly be true, but if Blaine really believes it, then Kurt can’t see why he shouldn’t.

He leans closer to Blaine, resting his head on his shoulder. “They’re not doing a very good job.”

Blaine giggles and says, “They just need to be louder.”

They do get louder, and some time later that night, the rain slows, until it’s just thunder and lightning, but nothing he’s afraid of.

He stays up that night to read, flashlight shining on the pages as a particularly hard gust of wind rattles the window. He jumps a little when his door opens up, his dad peeking his head in.

“Just checkin’ to see if you’re okay.”

Kurt smiles at his dad before going back to his book. “I’m fine.”

“Not scared, kiddo?” his dad asks, walking into the room and going to the window.

Not taking his eyes off the book, he says, “Nope.”

“Oh really? Last time the thunder was this loud you kicked me out of my own bed.”

Kurt finally puts his book down, giving his dad his best know-it-all look, the look he gives him when he knows something his dad doesn’t.

“Dad, it’s just the dragons.”

His dad comes over, pulls his blanket up higher and runs a hand through his hair. “The dragons?”

“They scare the rain away.”

His dad laughs, sounding like he doesn’t believe him, but Kurt doesn’t care.

“Yeah, yeah they do.”

-

**Seven**

Their favourite thing to do is recreate movies. Kurt makes the outfits, cutting up old clothes and towels, sometimes with his mom’s permission, but mostly without, and glues them together the best he can, sometimes brave enough to use a sewing needle when need calls for it.

Not outfits for them, because his mom would probably cry at all the clothes he would have to cut up, but outfits for their Power Rangers.

Cinderella’s dress proved near impossible, but he was able to get a blue dish cloth to look fairly similar, and Blaine plays Prince Charming, always.

“What would happen if Cinderella didn’t lose her shoe?” Kurt asks as they play, adjusting the Power Ranger’s dress. “How would the prince ever find her?”

Blaine makes a face, eyes darting up to meet Kurt’s. “She was meant to lose her shoe, Kurt.”

Kurt frowns, because what if she _didn’t_ lose her shoe, what if the shoe was quality-made and actually fit her stupid tiny foot?

“And what are the chances of Cinderella being the only one in the whole kingdom to fit the shoe? How small is her foot? Does she have four toes?”

“Kurt,” Blaine says with a harsh laugh, making his Power Ranger extend his hand, trying to make it hold the hand of Kurt’s Cinderella. “It was just meant to fit her foot and her foot only.”

Still frowning, Kurt says, “Okay . . . but what would have happened if he didn’t find her?”

Blaine gives Kurt one last hard look before it melts away, and he smiles. “He’ll always find her, Kurt, they’re soulmates. It was meant to happen.”

Kurt looks down at their Power Rangers, the plastic hands clicking together when Blaine presses them hard enough.

“Did Cooper tell you that?”

“No, I just know.”

Like they were made to go together.

-

“If we could afford to send you, we would, angel,” his mom says soothingly, petting back his hair from his forehead.

His cheek is pressed hard against her leg, vision blurry and eyes burning from his tears, and he thinks crying has never hurt this bad before. His throat hurts a lot as he makes himself say, voice muffled and quiet, “I’m going to be so bored.”

“I know, I know.” She continues to stroke through his hair, completely unaware that Kurt’s on the verge of just _sobbing_. “We’ll go to the amusement park in August, I promise. And maybe you can make new friends!”

He swallows, tries to breathe through the block in his throat. “Okay.”

He doesn’t say how it won’t be the same.

Blaine is leaving for summer camp tomorrow. From the end of June until the end of August, he’ll be alone, and Blaine will be miles and miles away. For as long as Kurt can remember Blaine has always been next door, and now he won’t be.

He doesn’t say just how sad he is.

-

He saw the car through his bedroom window, saw Blaine’s dad load up the trunk with Blaine’s things.

He doesn’t go outside to see if he can help with anything, doesn’t keep looking out the window to see if Blaine comes out.

During breakfast his mom asks, “Do you want to go say bye to Blaine? They said they were leaving around nine.”

Kurt stares at his cereal, trying his best not to show that he’s sulking. “No.”

His dad’s boot nudges his foot from underneath the table. “Kurt, manners.”

He closes his eyes and shakes his head, bites his lip until he can’t breathe anymore.

“I’m not saying bye to him because I don’t want him to go.”

A hand lands on his shoulder, gently squeezing it, and his mom says, “He’d appreciate it.”

Kurt looks down at his lap, opens his eyes and lets the tears fall because it hurts more to keep them in. He lies as he says, “No, I don’t want to.”

He should, because every second he can spend with Blaine he wants to. But saying goodbye means you’re taking a chance of never saying hello again, and that’s something he can’t do.

His mom kisses the top of his head, whispers, “Okay, it’s okay.”

He knows it’s not.

-

It’s not as fun without Blaine, but it’s manageable. Being alone is something he’s good at.

The sun isn’t as blistering today, but his mom still insisted on him wearing the largest hat she could find, and his skin feels oily from the sunscreen. He’s almost glad Blaine’s not here to see him like this.

He’s spent the past two hours working on a chalk mural over the driveway. Pretty flowers mostly, but there’s only so many shades of blue you can create with chalk.

The Anderson’s screen door makes a squeaky sound, and his heart still hasn’t learned to stop beating quicker when he hears it, even though his mind already knows it’s not Blaine.

Cooper bounds down the steps, jacket slung over his shoulder, and Kurt can’t lie and say he doesn’t feel happy when Cooper’s around, because as mean as he is to Blaine, he’s really nice to Kurt.

“Hi Cooper,” Kurt says, dusting off his chalk-covered hands, hoping his red cheeks are covered by the shadow of his hat.

Cooper stops at the front of his car and waves to him. “Wassup, Kurt? Having fun?”

Kurt shrugs, scowls down at the chalk. “I wouldn’t call it fun.”

“Ah,” Cooper says, grinning that grin that makes Blaine mad and makes Kurt’s stomach swoop a little. “You miss Blaine.”

Kurt _knows_ he turns super red then, and shakes his head and spits out, “No I don’t!”

“Alrighty,” Cooper sings, still grinning. “Then I guess it won’t make you happy to hear that he’s coming back early.”

He freezes. Everything in him freezes. His heart and his blood and his eyes and his mouth.

He says slowly, not sure if he heard correctly, not sure if he’s still really alive, “He’s what?”

“His counselors called last night. Little baby is homesick.”

Mouth feeling dry and his throat not wanting to cooperate, it takes him a few seconds to ask, “When does he come home?”

Cooper opens the car door and says, “I’m on my way to go get him now.”

And then all of his body is working again and he thinks his heart is racing ten times faster and he thinks his brain has been replaced with a firework because he’s exploding and he knocks over his box of chalk in his haste to get up, running straight into Cooper and hugging him.

“Thank you, Cooper! Thank you!” he yells, squeezing Cooper tight around the waist, smiling harder than he has all summer, before running away to go back into the house, feeling like singing all the songs his mom likes to play.

-

He hears the car roll up into the driveway, and Kurt slams his fork down, rattling the dining table.

“Easy, Kurt,” his dad says, pointing at Kurt with his own fork. “Finish your dinner.”

He has to take a deep breath, doesn’t see the need for food right now, how could he even eat when Blaine is home Blaine is home _Blaine is home_. He looks to his mom, breathing fast now, with his eyes wide, questioning, pleading.

His mom shares a look with his dad, some silent type of language that only adults can understand, and then she looks at Kurt. “He just got in. He’ll need some time with his parents first, don’t you think?”

He doesn’t mean to whine so annoyingly, but he does, and he thinks about fake crying, but instead he grumbles, “I wouldn’t.”

“ _Kurt_ ,” both his parents say sternly.

He huffs and sighs out, “Sorry.”

Dinner is bland, and it must have only been two minutes since the Anderson’s car pulled in but it feels like an eternity, and it’s two minutes for Kurt’s mind to run wild and think horrible things that he knows he shouldn’t. The most horrible thought of all being _what if he didn’t miss me as much as I missed him?_

But then there’s a knock at the door. Not just any old boring knock. But a special one, a special pattern, like a tiny little song played just to make Kurt happy. Blaine’s knock.

He nearly passes out.

His parents look at each other again, then at Kurt, then at each other, all while Kurt sits and holds his breath.

The very second the words, “Okay, go,” leave his dad’s lips, Kurt’s out of his chair and sprinting the small distance to the door.

He swings the door open, knows it slams and knows his dad calls his name loud from the kitchen, but Blaine’s right in front of him and Kurt almost forgot what he looked like but now he remembers and he never wants to forget again.

Blaine’s a little bit taller now, a little darker, but that’s the only difference, and his hug still feels the same, arms wrapped up tight around Kurt and his laugh so bright Kurt can hardly hear his own.

“Hi,” Blaine says, voice high. “Hihihi -”

He doesn’t know what to say back, both of them releasing each other and stepping out onto the porch. He doesn’t know what to say, can’t say _I missed you_ because the thought of saying that makes him feel sick.

Blaine smiles wide, says excitedly, “My mom told me to not come over because you were probably eating dinner.”

Kurt laughs, eyes scrunching up, says just as excitedly, “My mom told me to not come over because you just got home!”

Blaine laughs and hugs Kurt again, and Kurt wonders why they ever really stopped. “I don’t even care if I get grounded.”

Kurt hugs him back. “I don’t either.”

They run to the backyard, taking their places on the swings, like no time has passed and they were never really apart.

Kurt still doesn’t know what exactly to say, because while being with Blaine again feels just like it did before, in the back of his mind, all those horrible thoughts remind him that it’s a little bit different.

He decides to ask, “How was camp?”

Blaine climbs up to stand on his swing, arms raised above his head to grab the metal rod holding them up. He says while swinging, almost distractedly, “So much fun, Kurt. We played so many games and went on really cool hikes and - oh! One night there was a bear outside our cabin!”

He wants to be happy for him, he knows to not be selfish.

He still frowns, looking down at his feet, swinging coming to a stop.

Blaine climbs down, sits back on his seat and tilts his head to the side. “But how was your summer? Did you learn all the songs to Moulin Rouge yet?”

Kurt’s mouth tugs to the side in a half smile, but his voice is sad as he says, “No. I didn’t do anything.”

Blaine tilts his head to the other side, leaning his swing closer to Kurt’s. “Why?”

He makes his hands into fists, nails biting his palms, and looks away.

“Kurt?”

He looks back, and he knows he can’t be selfish, he should be happy Blaine is home, but if Blaine was having so much fun without him then why didn’t he just stay?

“Why did you come back early?” he asks, trying to keep his voice together. “It sounds like you were having a lot of fun.”

Blaine’s mouth falls open, eyes going hard. “I - I wanted to come home.”

Kurt starts hooking his fingers together, keeps his gaze trained on his hands. “Did you miss your parents?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh. Okay.”

He wants to go back inside now.

But Blaine moves to sit on the ground in front of Kurt, smiling so easily, smiling so warmly that Kurt couldn’t possibly be sad when he looks at him.

“But also,” Blaine says, voice a little quieter. “None of the kids there were like you.”

It takes a few seconds for the words to completely get to his brain, and a few more seconds after that to get them to his heart, but then he’s smiling just like Blaine is, looking right into Blaine’s eyes.

He laughs, nose wrinkling, and says with a sneer, “My mom tried to get me to play with Finn Hudson.”

Blaine laughs too, eyes widening in shock. “Was he mean?”

“No,” Kurt says, eyes never leaving Blaine’s. “But he wasn’t you, either.”

Blaine looks away, starts to pick at some grass, and his face looks a little redder, cheeks a little pinker. “Good thing I came home then.”

-

It’s a completely different kind of summer now.

The sun is hotter, the skies are brighter, and Kurt and Blaine can’t be apart.

Kurt doesn’t even mind the sunburn he got from going to the creek with Blaine and Cooper last week, and Blaine doesn’t laugh at the silly hat his mom has practically glued to his head now.

It’s an early sunny morning, the house already warm and the birds are singing and his favourite cartoon is on as he eats his cereal in front of the TV. It only gets better when his mom walks in, leaning against the doorframe to the living room, humming along until Kurt finally looks at her.

“I had an idea,” she says thoughtfully, tapping her finger against her lips. “How about we finally go to that amusement park we were talking about?”

He jolts up excitedly, milk nearly spilling out of the bowl. The first thing he can think to ask is, “Can Blaine come?”

His mom smiles, walking into the living room and sitting down next to him, poking him gently in the stomach. “I know it seems impossible, but you can do things separate from Blaine, you know.”

“Yeah,” Kurt says, voice full of disgust, making a face. “But then it isn’t as fun.”

His mom laughs, ruffling up his hair, sighing as she leans into him and wrapping one arm around his back. “You know what? I remember when we first moved here. I was so afraid you wouldn’t have many friends, since all the neighbourhood kids were older. But we were lucky, because there was a boy exactly your age right next door.”

“Was it Blaine?” he asks, though he’s pretty sure it is.

“It was Blaine,” she says happily, eyes bright and expressive, like if Kurt looks hard enough he can actually see the memories she’s picturing. “A chubby little guy who liked to roll everywhere instead of walking.”

Kurt laughs hard, stomach hurting, eyes and nose scrunching up. “Blaine was chubby?” he asks between breathless giggles.

“Yes, and very cute. Just like you.”

“I don’t remember.”

“Well, you were two.”

Something about the way his mom talks about Blaine, like he was her baby just as much as Kurt was, makes Kurt’s heart dance and his chest feel warm like sunshine.

“Did we play a lot?” he asks, twisting in his mom’s hold to look up at her face.

Her eyebrows pinch together, eyes thoughtful up at the ceiling. “You didn’t get along very well at first. You both cried all the time.”

“No!” he squeals, not wanting to believe there was ever a time that he didn’t like Blaine.

“Yes! You only calmed down when we played music.”

He giggles again, shaking his head. “I don’t believe you.”

“Mommy doesn’t lie,” his mom scolds, pinching his stomach and laughing. “But you grew out of it, thank god, and became best friends by the time you were three. Imagine if you still didn’t get along, what a nightmare that would be!”

Kurt smiles along with her, but it dies down, and he thinks, and he thinks, and what would have happened if they didn’t get along?

He shakes his head and tugs at his mom’s shirt.

“Mommy that’s impossible,” he says, matter-of-factly. “It was meant to happen.”

-

**Eight**

His mom gets in an accident.

She doesn’t make it.

The days before and the days after all blur together, into one massive, never ending hour of hearing the words, over and over. Feeling the splintering of the world, the universe, the ground beneath his feet and the ribs around his lungs.

It never ends.

The world doesn’t have colour anymore. He thinks maybe colour never really existed. Songs on the radio have been drained of music, of lyrics, it’s all just mindless screaming and yelling and static.

All he can do is look forward, at his hands, never in the mirror or at his dad or out the window or even at Blaine.

He doesn’t want to play with Blaine anymore.

If he lets his mind wander far past his hands, then he thinks about it, thinks about the chances, the statistics, that he heard his family at the funeral talking about. Shouldn’t have happened, much too soon, taken too early, if she were just one minute earlier, or one minute later, then she would still be alive.

It’s his fault. It’s his dad’s fault.

If his dad just drove him to school instead then maybe -

And if he didn’t take so long getting dressed then perhaps -

He looks back to his hands.

He tries to make himself cry, but he can’t. The sadness sits with him, and he can’t get rid of it, no matter how hard he tries.

He’s not sure how the world is still going.

There’s a song playing, or, not playing, but being tapped into the front door. He can hear it from up in his bedroom, and he knows it’s Blaine, who he hasn’t seen since they were at the cemetery, but Kurt didn’t really look at him then, either.

The front door opens.

The front door closes.

For a second he wants to get up and go find him, wants to feel normal and go back to the way things were and have it all be the same.

He can’t.

It isn’t.

-

In school he lifts his chin high and ignores the looks.

Rachel Berry makes him a card. Flowers coloured beautifully and _‘I’m sorry_ ’ carefully written on the inside. He doesn’t cry, he says thank you, and he lets her hug him.

Once she leaves, he throws it in the garbage.

At lunch on the playground, Kurt sits on a swing, keeps staring at his hands. Footsteps sound against the gravel underneath the swings, and he looks up to see Blaine, walking slowly, carefully, eyes hesitant once they meet Kurt’s.

It startles Kurt, only for a second, the way Blaine quickly looks away as he approaches him, like he’s just as afraid of looking at Kurt as Kurt is afraid of him.

He’s carrying Rachel’s card.

“Kurt?” Blaine asks, sounding worlds away. “Are you throwing this out?”

Kurt looks back down, says to his hands, “Yes.”

Blaine sounds close to crying. “She probably worked really hard on it.”

Kurt can’t cry anyway, so he’s not afraid as he says, “I looked at it. I said thank you. I don’t need it.”

“Kurt.”

He feels angry instead of hurt, asking loudly, “ _What_ , Blaine?”

“Are you okay?”

It hurts then. Like touching something that’s hot and not being able to react quick enough, the pain of stupidity hurting more than the burn itself. He jerks his head up and holds Blaine’s gaze and in that moment he knows that’s the strongest he’ll ever be, because the pressure to crack and break hits him then, but he doesn’t.

“Yes, of course.”

Blaine’s eyes are watering up, face pulling like he’s fighting back tears. “Please don’t lie to me.”

His voice is almost enough to scratch the surface of Kurt’s heart, he doesn’t want Blaine to sound like that. He looks down to his hands and lies, “I’m fine. Why wouldn’t I be?”

Blaine exhales shakily, taking a careful step forward. “I’m scared about you.”

“Worried, Blaine,” Kurt corrects him.

“I’m worried about you, too!” Blaine yells, cries, but Kurt doesn’t look up.

He breathes in, breathes out, just wants to seal it all in. If he can’t get it out, if he can’t cry and if he can’t get rid of the sadness, then he’ll seal it all in, down deep, until he forgets it.

He looks up, and his eyes hurt and his face aches from forcing his smile, but he still asks, “Do you want to play grounders?”

Blaine looks shocked, taking a step back. “What - no!”

“Tag?”

Blaine shakes his head frantically, face red and wet, babbling, “Kurt - what are you talking about?”

He stands up, and he hates Blaine, in this moment he hates Blaine for not getting it, but he has to seal it all up.

“It didn’t happen, Blaine, okay?” he says, marching past him. “She didn’t exist. Let’s go play now.”

-

That’s his plan. It never happened.

Pushes memories away and ignores her voice in his head and he doesn’t dare go in her room because it smells like her.

But she never existed.

He wakes up Saturday morning and tells himself it’s just another Saturday morning.

His dad is making coffee, looking so normal, and Kurt wonders if his dad is doing the same thing he is.

He sits at the table and pretends he’s hungry or else his dad will force him to eat something gross, so he pours himself a bowl of cereal, asking his dad in a quiet voice, “Are you going to work today?”

It’s been -

He can’t remember.

Maybe a week, maybe two, maybe a month.

His dad sighs, rubs at his forehead. “I shouldn’t.”

“Why?” he asks, holding his spoon but doing nothing with it.

“You’re eight years old, Kurt. You shouldn’t be by yourself,” his dad explains, still covering his face.

“It’s okay,” he says, and he means it. “Your store needs you.”

His dad moves to the table and sits down, holds Kurt’s wrist, and he nearly pulls it away.

“You need me too, right?”

He looks away and doesn’t say the first thing that crosses his mind. Instead he says, “Yes.”

Not as much as I need her.

“I know the phone number,” he continues. “I’ll be okay.”

His dad bites over his lip and looks in the opposite direction, before standing, ruffling Kurt’s hair just like she did.

“I’ll go back next week,” his dad says, and he sounds tired, worn, or maybe he’s always sounded like that, maybe he’s just not as strong anymore. “How’s that?”

Kurt tries to smile.

He fails.

-

The doorbell rings, which it hasn’t in a long, long time.

So he’s surprised to open it and see Blaine.

And then the surprise is over, and he’s genuinely relieved.

“Um,” Blaine says, rocking back on his heels. “I just wanted to say hi.”

Kurt stands behind the door, only half his body peeking out, and his voice is small, quiet from barely being used. “Hi.”

But he wants to reach out now, like he’s just been melted and freed from ice, finally.

Blaine looks scared, confused, eyebrows high and pinched together. “Should I say bye now?”

Kurt quickly shakes his head, opening the door fully. “No, don’t,” he says, shakily. “I, um, was just making tea. Would you like to join me?”

“Sure!” Blaine cheers, and his enthusiasm is like gold and it melts Kurt further.

Blaine carries the tray for Kurt, carefully balancing the tea pot and the cups. Kurt takes the cups and sets them on the ground in the living room, far away from the backyard where his mom would host parties for just them.

“Don’t we usually have tea at a table?” Blaine asks as he sits cross-legged, looking confused.

Kurt says quietly, “Not anymore.”

They sip their tea in silence, but it doesn’t feel awkward like it does when he’s with his dad.

Eventually Blaine makes a face, tongue sticking out as he says, raspily, “Tea would be better if it tasted like chocolate.”

His lips twitch, wanting to smile, but it fades quickly. “I like it.”

Blaine shrugs, takes another sip. “Then I do, too.”

But the silence lasts too long, too long not looking at his hands, giving him time to think, to remember, to seal himself back up in ice. His hand starts to shake, teacup rattling in his hands, eyes beginning to burn up with tears he can’t shed.

He quickly puts his cup down, wiping at his eyes.

“Kurt, did you burn your tongue?” Blaine asks, voice ringing with panic.

“I’m fine!” Kurt snaps back, making a mistake by lowering his hand to glare at Blaine, and he knows the exact second Blaine sees.

“Stop lying!” Blaine cries, setting his own cup down and moving closer to Kurt. “You keep saying that but I know it’s not true.”

Kurt turns, hard and fast, and jerks his head down. “Go away!”

Blaine’s hand lands against his shoulder, and Kurt nearly screams it’s so hot and so loud and like being shaken awake when he was so happy sleeping. “Kurt, you’re scaring me again!”

He hides his face and chants, “Stop, stop, stop -”

He feels it all, all of it, every second of that moment and the pain that hasn’t left and the pain that never will and he let Blaine see it so now he can’t ever hide it, can’t ever seal it away.

“Anything, Kurt, anything you want to say you can say to me!”

Blaine’s hand grips tighter, pulling insistently, and Blaine’s never had to force Kurt to do anything, never, and it’s this fact that has Kurt turning around to face him again.

“There’s nothing to say,” Kurt says, somehow still intact, voice still together.

Blaine is yelling, Blaine is frantic. “I know you’re pretending she doesn’t exist, but I think that’s only hurting you more, Kurt.”

Ice can break, he learns. Break in the way glass does. Shattering. Cutting. Cold.

“If she doesn’t exist, then I can’t miss her,” Kurt cries, he cries, breath punched out of him and tears stinging his eyes and his cheeks and his heart. “I can’t miss her I can’t miss her -”

Blaine’s hands come up to both his shoulders, and it feels so strange having somebody so close, having that someone be Blaine, but in the back of his mind he thinks it could only be Blaine.

“I don’t want to make you any more sadder, Kurt, but -” Blaine cuts himself off, sniffles back tears and shakes his head before looking back up. “I would never want you to pretend that I don’t exist, and I don’t think she would either.”

Kurt gasps for air, fights for it, tears overwhelming everything, a flood of them, from being suppressed for so long and now he can’t breathe.

It feels like forever, it hurts, and then he finally asks, finally gets out, because Blaine knows the answer to everything, “Then how do you stop the hurting inside?”

He cries, and Blaine grabs his hands.

Both of them, locked up tightly in Blaine’s fingers, and when he looks down at them it’s not emptiness he feels.

“I don’t know,” Blaine says, miserable and terrified all at once. “I don’t know, Kurt.”

“How do I stop feeling so - so lonely?”

“I don’t know that either, Kurt.” Blaine lets go of his hands, launches forward to wrap his arms around Kurt’s shoulders and pull him close, and Blaine isn’t much bigger than him but he feels like safety and security and like an invincible wall between Kurt and the world. “Maybe we should ask your dad?”

Kurt sniffles, says between gasping breaths, “I don’t think he knows either.”

There are no more words after that, just both of them trying to breathe and Kurt’s heart trying to calm itself down, entire body sprung back into motion and life and all his body parts trying to figure out how to work again, surprised that they even can.

Blaine’s hand slides down and clutches at his back, face nuzzling to get closer to Kurt’s neck.

There he whispers, and Kurt feels it before he hears it, “You’re my best friend, Kurt, and I know it doesn’t fix everything, but you’re not alone.”

He can only nod, weak and sad, and let Blaine hold him.

At some point afterwards, they fall asleep.

-

**Nine**

It takes a few weeks, maybe a couple of months, before he feels _almost_ normal, where he doesn’t feel so wrong or so bad for playing outside and having fun.

Blaine asks him to sleepover, saying Cooper rented a really scary movie and he’s going to let them watch it.

He almost says no, he almost lies and tells Blaine his dad wants him to stay home, because at night is when he feels sad the most. He’s not sure if he’s ready to accept that the world outside his house is still normal and fine and not at all ruined.

But Blaine knows that’s not true, Blaine knows what Kurt’s feeling, Blaine’s the only human being in the whole galaxy who isn’t trying to force Kurt back into this normal world, so instead of saying no, he says yes.

“I’m not scared,” Blaine announces as the movie begins. The living room is pitch black except for the TV, creepy music taking over the silence, and even though he says he’s not scared, Blaine still has the blanket pulled up to his chin. “Not even a little.”

“I’m absolutely not scared,” Kurt says in agreement, pulling his side of the blanket up higher despite his words. “It’s all fictional.”

But his heart's still racing and his hands hurt from clutching at the blanket so hard, and maybe he is scared but he isn’t going to admit it if Blaine isn’t.

Blaine’s hand finds his underneath the blanket, and relief floods Kurt’s chest as he grabs back.

But then a monster or a ghost or a zombie or _something_ pops up on screen and Kurt screams, loud and high and it’s not until he’s gasping for his breath that he realizes Blaine screamed too. They look at each other, frantically breathing and eyes wide, both of them shaking their heads quickly.

“Kurt, I lied, I’m scared.”

“I lied too. Can we change the movie?”

Blaine nods, throwing off the blanket and running to turn the living room light on. “Just don’t tell Cooper, or else he’ll never stop making fun of me.”

They watch a Disney movie instead, and it’s when his mind starts to settle, when he forgets all about the scary monsters, that he realizes life feels normal.

And not normal in the way he knows it isn’t. Normal in a new way.

It’s living, and accepting it, and not hating himself for accepting it.

It feels . . . it feels weird, but it doesn’t feel wrong.

Blaine yawns, lays back on the pillow and shuts his eyes. He usually falls asleep first during sleepovers. Kurt keeps watching the movie, feeling sleepy but he can’t get his eyes to shut.

“Kurt?” Blaine asks, startling Kurt for a second because he thought he was asleep.

Kurt turns over so he’s facing Blaine, asks quietly, “What?”

Eyes still closed, Blaine smiles, a warm and tired smile against the pillow. “I really missed you.”

He feels funny, like he just heard a secret he wasn’t supposed to hear. He thinks of what Blaine means, because they see each other every day, he hasn’t gone anywhere.

“I’ve been right here, Blaine,” he says, quietly, frowning even though Blaine can’t see it.

Blaine shrugs a shoulder, doesn’t open his eyes, and shuffles closer until his knee is bumping Kurt’s.

“I still really missed you.”

-

**Ten**

He’s always felt a little bad for Rachel Berry, because he guesses she’s a bit different, like he is. But she doesn’t have a friend like Blaine, like he does.

She sits in front of him, always raising her hand to all the teacher’s questions, knowing all the answers to everything ever. He thinks he’s nice to her, but really, he just tolerates her.

 _Blaine_ is the one that’s nice to her.

He’s the one that offered to be her partner for the field trip when no one else wanted to, leaving Kurt with Tina Cohen-Chang.

Kurt didn’t get upset about that, because he knew Blaine was just being nice. Kurt is Blaine’s best friend and Rachel could never replace him.

He thought that, he did, until earlier today, when Rachel Berry left a note on Blaine’s desk after recess. He didn’t even have to see the note to know what the message was, the whole class knew, because it was only a few seconds until everyone was singing _‘Blaine and Rachel sitting in a tree -’_

Blaine turned bright red and hid his face, and Rachel sat in front of Kurt and twisted her hair around and giggled whenever Blaine looked her way and smiled.

Kurt realized, quickly and instantly, and he wonders why he never thought about it before, just how he can be replaced.

His heart sunk, and he hasn’t been able to find it since.

-

“You don’t really like Rachel, do you?” he asks Blaine, as they walk home from school.

It’s been burning up inside of him all day. Anger or hatred or jealousy or some other feeling that makes his mind flare up red when he thinks about it. Blaine _can’t_ like Rachel, not like that, she’s infuriating and a know-it-all and she still dresses like a two year old.

Blaine’s mouth tugs up to the side, a half smile, cheeks turning pink and shoulders shrugging. “I don’t know, maybe. She’s cool.”

Kurt barks out his laugh, honestly thinking that Blaine’s kidding. “She’s crazy,” he corrects him.

Blaine shoots him a look, eyebrows pointed and smile gone. “That’s mean, Kurt.”

Kurt’s shoulders sink, guilt flooding his chest, and he mumbles, “It’s the truth.”

Blaine keeps looking at Kurt weirdly. “I thought you liked her.”

He feels caught off guard, like he’s the one who should be feeling bad, like he’s the one that did something wrong.

“As an acquaintance, maybe,” Kurt says simply, hands toying with the straps of his backpack. “More of an annoyance.”

Blaine gives a short laugh, a shake of his head, still not looking entirely happy. “That’s still mean.”

He doesn’t want to ask any more questions, doesn’t want Blaine to admit anything else, because he’s acting like he’s fine but really the place where his heart used to be is filling up with hurt. He doesn’t want it to be true. He doesn’t want Blaine to replace him.

So he acts like it doesn’t bother him, lifting his chin up and walking faster, not meeting Blaine’s eyes, and he huffs, “Well if you really do like her, you must be crazy, too.”

-

Two days a week, for two hours, Blaine has piano lessons. So Kurt sees a little bit less of him.

Blaine says they’re boring, but he’s really good, Kurt could listen to him all day. In music class at school Blaine always seeks out the piano, until the teacher catches him and tells him to stop. He plays random notes and simple songs but Kurt just knows he could create symphonies if he tried.

The teacher doesn’t like Kurt, because Kurt doesn’t sing when he’s supposed to. He can’t. He hasn’t sung since his mom was here, because she loved his voice, but he knows that nobody else will. They’ll laugh if he tries.

But Blaine sings, and Blaine is good at that, too.

If he tries hard enough, if he thinks way, way back, Kurt can remember how he used to sound, the songs he used to sing. Sort of. Almost.

“You should sing more. You don’t have to do it in class if it scares you, but sing right now, with me,” Blaine says, plinking away at the piano keys. He’s supposed to be practicing, but he asked Kurt to come over and listen. “I think you would help me play better.”

Kurt shakes his head a little, edging away from Blaine on the piano bench. “Maybe Rachel would help you play better.”

Blaine’s mouth pulls into a frown, looking at Kurt and then back to the keys. “But I don’t want Rachel to do it. I want you.”

His heart, wherever it is in his body now, stops. Everything stops, for just a moment, just enough time to process what Blaine’s said, and then it all starts moving again but this time everything’s moving faster, but he still can’t find his heart.

“I’m no good at it anyway,” Kurt says sadly, turning his body away from Blaine’s. “I sound like a girl.”

“I don’t mind,” Blaine says, smiling sheepishly, fingers fluttering from the left to the right, not playing any real song. “You don’t even have to sing words.”

Kurt thinks about it, slowly turning back to face Blaine, watching his hands move and listening to the notes being played, and he almost opens his mouth and sings something, anything, because something in Blaine’s music makes him want to open up and never stop singing, but he can’t.

Blaine just smiles at him, like it’s completely okay.

-

**Eleven**

Blaine looks at him a little strangely now.

Not always. Sometimes his eyes are the same and it’s just another look from Blaine.

But sometimes he catches him staring, and it doesn’t scare Kurt, or feel entirely wrong, it’s just - it’s different.

Rachel Berry doesn’t like Blaine anymore, or at least Kurt figures, because she’s kind of always annoying Finn Hudson, so that must mean she likes him now instead.

He never did find out if Blaine really liked her back.

-

“Hey wait, Kurt!” Blaine calls out to him as they run across the field, the ringing bell telling them it’s time to get back to class.

Kurt looks behind him, slowing his pace until he stops completely, watching Blaine get to his knees to carefully, carefully pluck out something from the grass.

“Blaine, we’re going to get detention if we’re late!”

Blaine walks over to him, hand outstretched, grin wide across his face.

“Here,” Blaine says, voice quieter than usual, offering Kurt whatever’s in his hand. “It’s blue. Your favourite colour.”

It’s only a small little flower, something you might stomp on if you’re not really looking.

It’s the most beautiful flower Kurt’s ever seen though, so he takes it and holds it carefully.

The warning bell rings, the lunchtime supervisors are yelling at them to hurry up, but he walks back to class slowly, so as to not lose the flower.

-

For the first year he couldn’t really look at his dad the same. Home didn’t truly feel like home. But they’re working on it, it’s getting easier, almost to that ‘normal’ that Kurt knows will never really be normal.

They still do Friday night dinners. More often than not it’s something microwaved or ordered in, unless his dad lets him do the cooking.

He’s been thinking of ways to pay Blaine back for the flower. The flower that’s now dried up and dead but still an important treasure, kept trapped between the pages of his math workbook so he can’t lose it.

At recess, he asks Blaine, “Do you have piano lessons this Friday?”

Blaine thinks about it for a second, eyes up at the sky. “No, not this week.”

“Do you . . do you want to come over for dinner then?”

Blaine’s mouth falls open, looking genuinely shocked. “Are you sure? I’ve never been invited to Friday dinner before.”

Kurt nods furiously, suddenly ashamed for not having invited him sooner. “You’re family, Blaine.”

Blaine looks away, but his smile is still visible to Kurt. “Is it okay with your dad?”

He hasn’t actually asked yet, but he nods again and says, “Yes, of course.”

-

“I don’t know, Kurt,” his dad says warily that Friday morning, looking at Kurt cautiously over the top of his newspaper.

“Dad,” Kurt says, rolling his eyes.

“I don’t wanna mess with tradition.”

He thinks, quickly and guiltily, that their tradition was already messed with, and it wasn’t a choice either of them got to make.

Disappointment is already beginning to weigh him down, so he pouts, hopes his dad can feel the burn of his gaze through the newspaper. “I already told him he could come over . . .”

His dad puts the newspaper down, glaring at Kurt fully now. “What have I told you about making promises you can’t keep?”

Kurt sighs, pushes bits of pancake around his plate. “I don’t understand why you’re being so difficult about this.”

“Kurt -” His dad rubs at his forehead, breathes through his nose. “It’s not a crime to want to keep some things sacred.”

Frustration replaces disappointment, because it’s not that his dad can’t let Blaine over, it’s that he doesn’t want to.

And frustration quickly melts down into that base feeling, where all his demons come from. Sadness.

He drops his fork, looks at his hands, and says in a whisper, “Mom used to tell me that Blaine was like a son to her. She loved him too, you know.”

The kitchen falls silent, his dad so quiet that Kurt thinks he might have disappeared.

“Is that so?” his dad eventually asks, voice rough.

Kurt nods, feels the oncoming break of tears climbing up his throat. “Do you see him like that?”

His dad pauses again, sips at his coffee before exhaling. “Yeah, I guess I do.”

Kurt lights up, outshining the sadness and all the feelings that come with it, asking excitedly, “So is that a yes?”

“Looks like it,” his dad says with a sigh, but his smile looks genuine. “But I’m not doing the cooking.”

Kurt waves his hand dismissively as he gets up from the table, grabbing the grocery shopping list off the fridge, handing it to his dad. “Here’s everything I need,” he says quickly, buzzing with energy. “Remember when I say basil, I don’t mean the dried-up kind.”

-

**Twelve**

Grade seven sucks. Blaine isn’t in his class.

And, because somebody is clearly plotting his misery, Rachel Berry is.

But she’s growing on him. They have a lot more in common than he previously thought. She claims her dads bought her a real Fanny Brice costume from some auction online, so until she can prove that, he’s still calling her an acquaintance.

This school must be where children go to either have their spirits ripped out, or where children go to rip spirits out.

At least in his old class everyone knew who he was, and even if they didn’t like him, they got used to him, and eventually just left him alone.

This year it’s like he’s an entirely new specimen, unwanted and ridiculed for even existing.

They have to go around the class and say their name and share an interesting fact about themselves. He doesn’t know what to say, he’s not very interesting, so he says, “Hello, I’m Kurt Hummel, and I can bake a pretty mean souffle.”

He doesn’t know why he says that, but it’s the truth, and he’d like to see any of the other kids in his class say they could bake a better one.

Nobody says anything, until one kid from across the room shouts, “Why do you sound so weird?”

A few people laugh, the teacher looks the other way, and Rachel turns in her seat and spits at the boy, “Why do _you_ look like a camel’s butt?”

The teacher steps in then, announcing, “That’s enough, that’s enough!”

He sits in his desk and feels like his lungs have been punctured, and when he finally remembers how to breathe, he’s never been so thankful for Rachel Berry in his life.

-

On the bus ride home, Kurt stares out the window, already dreading coming back tomorrow. Blaine’s chattering about his day next to him, and Kurt knows he can’t be selfish, he should be happy that Blaine’s happy, and he is but -

“I sit next to Mike and he’s really smart, so we made an agreement to help each other with homework, so that’s one less thing to worry about this year and - Kurt?”

Kurt shakes his head, peels away from the window and looks at Blaine. “Sorry, I was - I was thinking. That sounds really cool, Mike is nice.”

“Are you okay?”

Kurt’s eyes widen a bit, he wasn’t aware that he was letting it show that he _isn’t_ okay. And he can’t lie to Blaine, can’t pretend. He bites his lip, shrugs his shoulders and hopes that says all the words he can’t conjure up right now. “I’m - I’m trying to be.”

Blaine sets his backpack down on the floor, fully turns to Kurt and grabs at his hand, and the loud chaotic atmosphere of the bus disappears and suddenly it’s just them. “Did something happen?”

He feels awful, because Blaine was so happy just moments ago and if Kurt weren’t so weird and strange and wrong then Blaine could just be happy always. It’s not fair.

“Is there something wrong with my voice?” he asks, throat catching painfully.

Blaine shakes his head hard, thumb rubbing over the back of Kurt’s hand as his eyes grow more serious. “There’s nothing wrong with your voice, Kurt. Did somebody say that there is?”

Kurt laughs, laughs or else he’ll just cry, and says, “Some boy in my class just said that - that it was weird.”

“Well that boy is the stupidest boy on the planet,” Blaine says with certainty. “And you should never stop talking, just to spite him.”

Kurt laughs for real this time, the hardness in his chest dissolving. “Rachel called him a camel’s butt.”

Blaine laughs too, eyes scrunching up. “Then that’s exactly what he is, Kurt. Don’t worry about him.”

-

Blaine’s taken up guitar now, piano too simple for him.

And Kurt was right, Blaine could create songs that sum up the whole galaxy, and sing words that have no meaning but somehow define every feeling.

Kurt likes the guitar better though, because it doesn’t involve Blaine having lessons every single week. It’s just Blaine, and the guitar, and Kurt watching from his spot on Blaine’s bed

“I can’t get it!” Blaine cries, eyes focused hard on the strings of the guitar. “It’s not like the piano, I can’t get my fingers to go where I want them!”

“I think you sound fantastic.”

Blaine shoots him a look, then slumps back over the guitar. “You have to say that.”

“Fine,” Kurt huffs, nose up in the air. “Then you sound terrible.”

Laughing as he strums out some chords, Blaine shakes his head, then mumbles, “I’d play better if you sang with me.”

“I’d make it worse.”

“You’d make it better,” Blaine says insistently, stopping his strums. “Please, Kurt?”

Kurt threads his fingers together, not sure why Blaine wants this so bad, not sure why he can’t give in to it, what’s stopping his voice from coming out.

He looks at Blaine, and it’s one of those startling moments, where his heart just stops in alarm because he wasn’t aware that Blaine was staring at him.

“Fine,” he sighs, nerves along his spine ringing strangely the longer Blaine looks at him. “What song?”

Blaine shrugs. “Just make up the words.”

“I - I can’t do that.”

“It’s easy,” Blaine says, beginning to play a few lines. “ _My name is Blaine, I like to eat brains, and play in the rain!_ ”

He laughs, loud and delighted. “Brilliant, Blaine. Sondheim would be proud.”

Blaine grins, still playing. “Now you go.”

His stomach turns violently and his throat feels blocked but he manages, just barely, “ _My name is Kurt and_ \- nothing rhymes with Kurt!”

“It doesn’t have to rhyme!” Blaine sings, head now moving from side to side as he finally comes up with a basic rhythm. “ _Your name is Kurt and you’re really really great and amazing and my best friend!_ ”

Kurt can’t breathe with how hard he’s laughing, hand held out to the bed to support himself. He says between gasps, “No offense, but that has to be the worst song I’ve ever heard.”

But it seems to have worked, Blaine’s fingers running up and down the instrument in all the right places, playing all the right chords.

Blaine doesn’t stop looking at him, always always smiling. “It’s my new favourite.”

-

The teasing doesn’t stop. It’s like once one kid hates him, it grows and grows or spreads like a virus until every kid hates him.

Blaine has made friends, because Blaine is good at sports too, so nobody sees him as weird. It doesn’t make Kurt upset though, because he knows how important it is to Blaine to have people like him.

So he sticks with Rachel mostly, upgrading her from acquaintance to friend. He can make small talk with Tina, and sometimes even one of the popular girls, Brittany, because she doesn’t think he’s weird.

But Blaine always eats lunch with him, and always sits next to him on the bus, and Kurt knows at the end of the day that he has nothing to be afraid of, not as long as he has Blaine.

-

Somebody shoves a book out of his hand, and Kurt doesn’t flinch at the loud noise, able to ignore how his muscles instinctively want to pull him back and make him run away. He gets down to pick it up, but the kid kicks it out of his way, far out of his reach.

“Oh, sorry,” the boy says, and Kurt doesn’t know his name because all the kids have blurred together into one giant, venomous monster. “Was that your book?”

“Yes, and thank you for kicking it across the room,” Kurt says bitterly, glaring up at the boy. “I really appreciate it.”

“Sorry, what was that? I swear I’m looking at a boy, but it sounds like a girl!”

Everyone around them starts to laugh, and Kurt quickly stands up, brushes off his knees, keeps ignoring the urge to run.

He gets his book, sits down, ignores it and ignores it and ignores it until it goes away, and he doesn’t tell Blaine, because Blaine can’t fix everything.

-

“I have a surprise for you,” Blaine tells him on the bus ride home.

Kurt instantly lets go of the dread in his hands, turning to Blaine with wide eyes. “What?”

“Cooper flew in from Los Angeles this morning.”

He hasn’t seen Cooper in a _year_. His heart starts to gallop, eyes widening further as he grabs Blaine’s hand and squeaks, “Cooper’s home?”

“Try not to look so excited, Kurt,” Blaine teases, rolling his eyes, but his lips spread into a grin. “But yes, and he wants to take us to a movie later.”

He nearly bounces in his seat, squeezing Blaine’s hand, and Blaine squeezes back. He asks, all at once, all in one breath, “Why didn’t you tell me sooner! What am I going to wear? I need to fix my hair - how long is he here for - ?”

And he can hardly remember why he was holding onto dread and hurt, when he could have just held Blaine’s hand instead. And he knows Blaine can’t fix everything, but he can make everything . . .

Better.

-

**Thirteen**

He knows something is wrong because Blaine stops smiling as much.

Kurt knows the difference between Blaine just being polite, and Blaine being genuine. He’s spent most of his life on the receiving end of Blaine’s smile, of course he knows.

But the difference between now and all the other times that Blaine has been upset is that when Kurt tries to get him to talk, Blaine changes the subject, or Blaine tells Kurt he feels sick, or Blaine just simply ignores him.

It’s the worst feeling in the world, wanting to help and make him feel better and being utterly powerless and clueless as to how. Blaine’s always been there for him, always knows what to say and when to say it to get Kurt to smile, to feel better. Why can’t he do the same for him?

-

“I don’t really feel like playing guitar, Kurt.”

Blaine let him come over when he asked, and he’s thankful because he has a good idea, just wanting Blaine to smile for real this time and he thinks this could do it, maybe.

Kurt stands there with the guitar sitting awkwardly in his arms, offering it to Blaine like a present, and he panics for a second, feels the weight of Blaine’s voice heavy on his shoulders. He thinks, lips pressed together, then smiles, a little shyly.

“What if I sang with you?”

Blaine snaps his head up, confusion and hope mixed together in his eyes. “You want to sing?”

Kurt nods slowly, even though this idea has been forming in his mind all night and day he’s still not sure if it’s a good one. “A real song this time, if it’s quite alright with you.”

Blaine takes the guitar, just staring at it like he’s trying to remember how to hold it properly, or how to play. “Okay, which song?”

That Kurt hasn’t thought of. He shrugs, says, “What songs do you actually know?”

Blaine starts to fiddle with the tuning pegs, fingers lightly running over the strings, says above the noise, “You know the one by Jewel?”

Kurt thinks, because his music knowledge is limited to what his mom listened to and cast albums that he listens to with Rachel. “Play it for me.”

So Blaine plays it, and he does recognize it a bit, it is a song he heard on the radio growing up, but he doesn’t know the lyrics.

That’s okay, because Blaine does. He sings the chorus once for Kurt and Kurt thinks that at any second he could jump right in and sing along and know every note and word like he’s practiced it a million times before.

“Dreams last so long, even after you’re gone,” Blaine sings, and his eyes flash up and look at Kurt and Blaine isn’t smiling, but Kurt knows he doesn’t feel sad. “I know that you love me.”

He feels scared all of a sudden. Because Blaine’s still looking at him and Kurt can’t remember the words he knows are coming up, knows it’s the chorus, but he finds he can sing them anyways, voice a little scratchy and quiet because he hasn’t sung in so long. “And - and soon you will see.”

Blaine grins, shoulders swaying a little, looking back down at the guitar and watching his fingers move.

“You were meant for me, and I was meant for you.”

He stops playing, all the words run out, but Kurt still hears the music and still hears his own voice and he doesn’t feel ashamed or embarrassed like he thought he would, and Blaine’s still smiling, like he’s been happy his entire life.

“That’s a nice song,” Kurt says slowly, clearing the silence, heart racing even though he hasn’t moved a muscle since sitting down. “Where did you learn it?”

“Taught myself,” Blaine mumbles, head tipped down. “It’s one of my favourites.”

Kurt nods, not sure why he’s nodding, not sure what he’s agreeing to.

“I can see why.”

-

“Can you come over? After school?”

Today Blaine’s smile is tight, forced, like he’s trying his best to keep being happy, but his voice sounds nothing close to the way it usually does, and Kurt’s stomach drops when he hears it.

“S-sure,” he stutters, nervous for some reason.

Blaine gives him another tight smile, pushes himself away from the lockers and walks down the hallway, head down, away from Kurt.

He spends the rest of the day trying to figure out why Blaine wants to see him. He thinks of the worst possible things that could happen.

Blaine could be sick. Blaine could be dying.

But then he wouldn’t be in class every day, would he?

Or Blaine is moving.

After Kurt thinks that, he can’t think about anything else, can’t focus, just feels sick and wrong and awful. That would explain everything, everything.

When they meet up after school to catch the bus, he has to remind himself that he can’t throw his arms around Blaine’s neck and beg him to stay, because Blaine hasn’t even told him yet.

He just has to wait, fiddle with his thumbs, try and calm his heart, try and reason with himself that Blaine can’t be moving, because they start high school in a few months and Blaine’s parents wouldn’t take him away now, would they?

Blaine stares out the window the whole time, and Kurt never stops looking at him, sees the way he visibly swallows and bites his lip when the bus pulls up to their street.

Blaine takes his backpack for him, hangs up his coat for him, offers him a drink or a snack but Kurt couldn’t possibly feel hungry now when all he can feel is dread and terror.

The house is empty, quiet. Emptier than Kurt’s house. Especially with Cooper gone.

They sit down in the living room, Blaine on one side of the couch and Kurt on the other, an entire world between them, and Blaine keeps sighing, keeps sucking in his breath, keeps tapping his hands over his legs and sighing again.

He watches him, feels his eyes burn up and his throat hurt, because he knows what’s coming and he’s not ready for it, he could never be ready for it, never ever ever.

“Blaine?” He means to say it, announce it, but instead he whispers it and nearly breaks.

Blaine looks over, eyes wide and unsure, and Blaine doesn’t look like the boy who knows all the answers to all Kurt’s questions, he just looks scared.

“I have to tell you something.”

Kurt’s hands curl in, fingernails sharp against his palms, voice shuddering out of him as he asks, “What - what do you need to tell me?”

Blaine sighs again, then stands up, stands just a foot or two away from Kurt and takes a deep breath.

He trusts Blaine with his entire life, his every secret, every wish and dream that he’ll ever have, and he hopes Blaine trusts him, he wants Blaine to look at him and know he can tell Kurt anything, that Kurt would do whatever it takes to get him to smile, because that’s what a best friend does.

“It’s okay, Blaine. I’m - I’m listening.”

Blaine nods, and breathes in a way that sounds like he’s holding back tears.

“I know I’ve been - things have been difficult for me lately, Kurt,” Blaine says, voice quiet, eyes to the ground. “I wanted to tell you sooner, but I wasn’t sure what to even say, or if I was even - if I was even sure.”

Kurt nods, words losing their meaning, all he can do is listen.

“I think I’ve known for a while. I think that maybe . . I’ve known my whole life, ever since I was little. I just - wasn’t sure if it was right, because nobody else at school feels this way. All the boys at school are normal, and they all like girls, so I . . . I didn’t know.”

“Didn’t - didn’t know what?” Kurt asks, and he knows it’s not really his mind that’s saying it, it’s just automatic.

Blaine smiles weakly, finally looking up at Kurt, eyes watery and shoulders slumped low, clearing his throat as he makes his smile wider.

“I don’t like girls, Kurt,” Blaine says, suddenly sounding brave and strong, the voice that Kurt knows like his own. “And I wasn’t sure if that was okay, and I still don’t - I still don’t know if that’s okay. But I can’t just lie anymore, because that makes me feel worse than the truth.”

His hands and legs are shaking now, entire body vibrating, his whole system panicking and crashing and he doesn’t know how to stop it or what to feel or what to even think, and Blaine looks terrified but he somehow looks relieved, and Kurt can’t quite process what exactly he means, so all he can say is, “So you’re - you’re -”

Blaine gives a small shrug, a sheepish smile. “I think I’m gay. Like . . . the way I feel about boys . . . is how I should feel about girls, but I can’t.”

He looks so small, and so young, but he sounds so smart and mature and brave and Kurt can only stare in awe, mouth stuck open.

He thinks about the true meaning, what it all really, really means, deep down. The consequences and changes that come with this, because he’s not dumb or oblivious, he knows what being gay means and he knows that the world sees it as bad, that the world wants you to pay for it.

But that just makes Blaine braver.

He feels like anything he says now will be insufficient. What does Blaine need to hear? That it’s okay, that it’s alright, that he doesn’t have to feel any certain way towards anybody if he can’t or doesn’t want to? It’s confusing, it’s hard to think through, but the one thing Kurt knows, knows with such clear certainty but he’s just not brave enough to say it, is that he feels the same way.

“Am I the first person you’re telling this to?” he eventually asks, and knows that it’s the wrong thing to say because Blaine’s features fall, his shoulders slump lower.

“Yeah, I, um - you’re the only one.”

Then he knows exactly what to do, exactly what to say, instinct pulling him up off the couch and towards Blaine, and together they’re both so small and young and scared but Kurt hugs Blaine and feels taller than he ever has, braver than he ever could be alone, and he hopes Blaine does too.

“Can I tell you something too, Blaine?” he whispers, face close to Blaine’s, arms tight around his neck. “It is okay. It’s okay to feel this way. So don’t - don’t ever feel wrong about it.”

Blaine’s hand comes up and rests on his back, fingers bunching up Kurt’s shirt, head resting on Kurt’s shoulder, and he sniffles back what must be tears so Kurt hugs him harder. “I’m trying, Kurt.”

He wants to know how Blaine came to realize this, or when exactly Blaine knew if he said he’s felt this way his whole life. He wants to know everything because up until just now, he thought he knew everything about Blaine but now there’s more to discover, more to explore.

“I really admire you, Blaine,” Kurt says, refusing to let go of him. “You’re the bravest person I know.”

“I’m not brave,” Blaine mumbles, head shaking. “Superheroes are brave. Firefighters are brave. I’m just being honest.”

Kurt smiles and lets out a laugh, shaking his head right back. “Exactly.”

-

Nothing between them changes, not really. He doesn’t look at Blaine differently or act weird around him, because maybe, deep down, maybe he kind of knew that about Blaine. And then there’s the fact that he feels the exact same way, so it doesn’t change for the worse, if it changes at all. It makes Kurt want to be that brave, to let himself think about it, to stop being so scared.

He asks Blaine one day, “When did you really, really know?”

Maybe he can give Kurt a clue to how long it takes to become less scared.

Blaine shrugs, says, “Kind of always, Kurt.”

Which is what he said before, when he first told Kurt, so Kurt figures Blaine must have got his courage elsewhere.

He nods, then thinks, and then realizes, eyes going wide and finger raising to point directly at Blaine, mouth open in shock. “Then you didn’t really like Rachel, did you?”

Blaine turns red and looks away, grinning brightly but shyly, shoulders raised up by his ears, and he mumbles, “I guess not.”

Something in Kurt’s chest settles, like an animal that’s been running for miles, or maybe years, finally given a chance to sleep. He smiles, not to Blaine, but to himself.

But -

But then if it wasn’t Rachel that Blaine was smiling at, who was it?

-

Everything else starts to change though.

After Blaine told Kurt, he told his mom.

She’s not a hateful person. There’s not a mean bone in her body or a mean hair on her head. But still, he waited for Blaine to call him or to come see him to let him know it went okay, that he’s okay, that she showed the support that Blaine needs.

She does.

Blaine says he wants to wait to tell his dad, because unlike his mom, he has a few mean bones.

So everything is fine, and everything is as it should be, and Blaine is happier than Kurt’s ever seen him before, like he was carrying something heavy and now he’s free.

They get off the bus together one day, excited to get to Kurt’s room to start planning their outfits for the grade eight graduation ceremony, but they both stop, both know that something is wrong because Blaine’s dad’s car is in the driveway, and Blaine’s dad has work until 9:00 PM.

He doesn’t see Blaine for two whole days, and when he does, Blaine doesn’t look as happy.

-

Sometimes Blaine stays at Kurt’s house for as long as he can, making up excuses to not go home, as to why he should stay with Kurt.

Sometimes Blaine doesn’t come over for days at a time.

The worst news is when Blaine tells him he’s going to California for a month in the summer, to stay with Cooper.

“It’s my dad’s idea,” Blaine explains as he packs up his suitcase, Kurt watching from his place on the bed. “He thinks it’ll be a good learning experience.”

Kurt tries to stay optimistic, because Blaine actually seems happy about it. “Maybe you’ll see someone famous. Oh, oh, what if you see a Kardashian!”

“Cooper says they’re not that great in real life.”

Kurt rolls his eyes, waves his hand. “Who cares about real life, Blaine?”

The next Monday Blaine leaves for California, and Kurt hugs him, doesn’t cry, waves at the car as they drive away but he doesn’t say goodbye.

-

He realizes the real reason Blaine got sent away one week after Blaine leaves.

The mail truck drives away, and he runs out the door, down the driveway and to the mailbox, having begged his dad for weeks and weeks for a sweater from a catalogue, and waited another round of weeks and weeks for it to come in.

The Anderson’s screen door makes a loud sound, and Kurt instinctively looks up, looks over, smiles when he sees Blaine’s dad bound down the steps to get to his car.

“Good morning, Mr. Anderson,” he says, automatically speaking in his most polite tone, his clearest voice, the way Blaine does when he talks to his dad.

Except this time, unlike every other time Kurt’s spoken to Blaine’s dad, he doesn’t smile, or pat Kurt’s shoulder. He just walks by, and says in a clipped tone, not even bothering with a proper greeting, “Kurt.”

Like Kurt doesn’t exist.

Or like he’d prefer it if Kurt didn’t exist.

-

**Fourteen**

The first day of high school is worse than every day of elementary and middle school combined.

Being weird is frowned upon.

Being _different_ is like a sickness, and nobody wants to catch what he has, so except for the two classes he has with Blaine, nobody talks to him.

He prefers that actually, because when they do talk to him, it’s never good things, it’s never something one human being should call another human being.

Blaine gets him through it. Blaine’s there, and Blaine talks to him like it really is just a hallway they’re walking down and not a war zone. Blaine is so much braver than he is.

It’s time to stop being afraid of people, and rooms, and places. It’s time to start being brave and being loud and using his voice.

He can’t.

One day one of the football players yells something, and Kurt thinks it’s directed towards him, his shoulders sinking and his footsteps quickening and feeling fear like he’s never felt before, but Blaine turns around, rolls his eyes, grabs Kurt’s elbow and pulls them into their class and away from the noise.

It wasn’t him being called some awful, homophobic, hurtful word - it was Blaine.

And somehow that’s more awful, somehow that makes Kurt sick in the stomach and in the heart, and he just wants to take Blaine’s hand and hold it and tell him none of it really matters.

But Blaine seems to have already forgotten about it, turned around in his seat and talking to the person behind him, asking them if they’ve done last week’s assignment.

Blaine meets him at his locker after school. Kurt stands, slumped against it, hands twisted together and eyes cast down, thinking, wondering, dreading. One day of this hell is endless, four years might just kill him. Unless . .

“How do you do it, Blaine?” he asks, quietly to his hands. “How are you surviving this?”

Blaine frowns, eyes thoughtful as his fingers open and close around the strap of his bag. “You mean how am I surviving all those stupid words those jocks think are insults?”

Kurt nods, stomach clenching as the word attacks his mind.

“I know who I am, Kurt,” Blaine says, power in his voice that has Kurt drawing his eyes back up. “So they can say whatever they want, it’s not going to change me. Once you accept that, it’s almost funny, watching them try, because I already know they’re always going to fail.”

Shame hits Kurt, sinks through his skin and seeps into his bones, shame and guilt and embarrassment. Like a light is being cast down, exposing him for the fraud he is, for the weakling he will always be, and another light shining down on Blaine, sparkling with how strong he is.

He’s left speechless, breathless, legs feeling numb and eyes calculating on Blaine.

“Where on earth do you get your courage from?”

Blaine looks at him and smirks, and says like it’s obvious, “Well, from you, Kurt.”

-

He tells his dad, terrified and scared and close to fainting or dying or drowning.

It turns out, he tells his dad what his dad has known all along.

Still, the relief he feels afterwards could render him weightless, could shoot him up into the sky and let him fly, never to come down again.

He tells Blaine.

Scarier than telling his dad.

His dad had the power to kick him out, get angry, leave him homeless and heartless and loveless.

Blaine has the power to do much worse, Kurt thinks. But Blaine doesn’t. Blaine hugs him, and says with tears in his voice, “Thank you for telling me, Kurt.”

When they pull away, faces just an inch or so away from each other’s, Kurt’s heart jerks in his chest in a way that doesn’t hurt, but feels so entirely different than any other heartbeat has.

-

Sam Evans is cute, Kurt supposes, but just cute. Kind of dumb, and silly, the way Finn Hudson is, but somehow more endearing, more appealing.

Okay, he’s very cute, and Kurt maybe sort of just possibly kind of -

Likes him.

He’s new to Lima, and he doesn’t know any of the other kids because he didn’t grow up with them.

Only, he’s a football player. And already starting to become popular because of that.

And he’s Blaine’s new best friend. So Kurt can’t like him.

It was more of a shock than a surprise to see them in the halls together, laughing and making weird jokes that Blaine never makes with Kurt, and it was more of a betrayal than a feeling of disappointment when Blaine went to Sam’s house after school, instead of Kurt’s.

Kurt knows that fourteen years old is far too old to be getting jealous, or to be spiteful of Blaine for having other friends. It’s not like Kurt’s entirely friendless either, because he still has Rachel and Tina, and that Mercedes Jones girl desperately needs his advice on twenty-first century fashion, so he’s befriended her, too.

It’s just that they’re not Blaine. It’s just that for the first time in his entire life, Kurt feels like Blaine might not really care that Sam isn’t Kurt.

But getting older is being braver, being stronger, not holding hurt deep down because you’re too afraid to say anything.

“Do you want to come over?” Kurt asks on the walk home from school, their houses coming into view down the street. “You’ll never guess who’s on the cover of this month’s Vogue.”

“Rachel Weisz,” Blaine scoffs, shaking his head. “And I wish I could, but Sam asked me to come over.”

“Oh,” Kurt says dejectedly, slowing his walk so home remains further away.

“He just got a new controller for his Xbox, so we can finally play together.”

“That sounds . . . fun.”

“But I could come over after?”

“It’s okay,” Kurt sighs, shrugging his shoulders. “You sure are spending a lot of time with Sam lately.”

Blaine completely stops walking, frown clear across his face. “Is that a bad thing?”

_Yes, yes, yes it is because I have this insane fear that you like him better than me, that he can be a better friend to you because he’s blonde and perfect and normal, that soon you won’t need me as much as I need you._

“No, no, no,” Kurt says quickly, marching past Blaine so he can’t see his face. “I just - there’s only so much of Rachel I can handle on my own. I’m this close to shoving a sock in her mouth.”

Blaine laughs, hurries to match Kurt’s pace, his elbow nudging Kurt’s. “Just promise me it’ll at least be a clean sock?”

Kurt smiles at Blaine, and he thinks about being honest, just telling him. He’s already told Blaine his biggest secret, so what’s the worse that could happen by sharing his darkest fear?

It could come true.

“Okay, but only because you asked.”

-

Blaine’s weird.

There’s no other word for it.

But for the past week Blaine’s been spending more time with him than with Sam, so he can’t complain.

He feels guilty for resenting Sam like that, because he’s one of the only boys in school who is actually nice to him, who doesn’t care who Kurt is or what he is or who he likes. He can see why Blaine likes him so much.

He just wonders what Sam did to Blaine to make him so -

 _Weird_.

He holds Kurt’s hand all the way up to his bedroom, which he hasn’t done since they were what, five? Back when they were little and they couldn’t find any good reason why they should ever let go of each other.

It’s weird that Blaine keeps looking at him and then promptly looking away, like Kurt’s eyes burn him, and it’s weird that there’s a slight flush of pink to Blaine’s cheeks when all they’re doing is getting ready to watch a movie together.

Kurt supposes it should feel a bit more awkward now, having sleepovers and sleeping right next to each other on the floor. It’s different now because they’re older and -

Well, a boy and a girl certainly wouldn’t be allowed to sleep next to each other at this age.

But it’s Blaine, so he doesn’t really find anything awkward with him, not after knowing each other this long.

“I, um, I watched a movie with Sam last weekend,” Blaine tells him as they set up their pillows and blankets on the ground in front of Blaine’s bed.

Pillow in his hands, Kurt frowns and asks, “What movie?”

“Um, it didn’t have a name,” Blaine says, quietly, like it’s a secret, like it’s something to be ashamed of. “It was - it was kind of gross.”

Kurt laughs at the face Blaine makes. “What was it about?”

Blaine stops moving, face completely red now, and he adverts Kurt’s eyes.

“Um, sex.”

He either freezes or blows up, he’s not really sure.

Because he has never, not once in all his years of knowing Blaine, heard him utter that word, or anything to do with it. He knows his face is just as red as Blaine’s, that his pulse is so loud it could be a drumbeat, that he should probably say something instead of staring at the ground in stomach-burning, mind-boggling shock.

“O-oh, okay.” He says it much too high, more of a squeak than a word. He swallows hard, forces air through his nose and finally looks up. “That’s - an interesting choice. Of movies. That you could have - watched with Sam.”

Blaine nods along, goes back to arranging his blanket, letting his breath out. “It was - it was his idea. I didn’t really - it was always a girl and a guy, so I didn’t - Kurt?”

He wants this conversation to be over, he’s not even sure where it came from, or why Blaine’s bringing it up.

He wants to know why the idea, the notion, the _act_ makes his skin crawl and his heart race.

He has to force out another breath, then looks at Blaine, and asks in his clearest voice, “Yeah?”

Blaine’s mouth twitches to the side, eyes flickering up and then away before he mumbles, “Nothing. I - I’ll ask you later.”

Kurt hopes later is years and years away.

-

Later is forty-five minutes after.

Kurt wasn’t really watching the movie anyway, all too aware of Blaine just a small space away from him, all too aware that certain thoughts have crossed Blaine’s mind, that his brain is no longer innocent or pure.

Blaine apparently, wasn’t watching the movie either, because forty-five minutes in he asks Kurt, out of nowhere, voice catching, “Kurt, do you ever - have you ever thought about - about sex?”

It’s like he knew it was coming though, because his throat doesn’t constrict with the urge to vomit and he doesn’t feel his face burn.

That’s two times now, that the word has left Blaine’s lips.

He doesn’t dare look at him though, because then he’d erupt, burst into flames, for sure.

“N-no. I don’t. Do you?”

He immediately regrets asking, should have let it die, should have turned up the movie and ignored Blaine.

“Sometimes,” Blaine says easily, voice warming up. “I know what it’s like for a guy and a girl, but I think it’s different for us.”

“Us?” Kurt croaks, thinks his soul is leaving him in pieces, taking his voice with him.

Blaine nods furiously, shifts around so he’s sitting in front of Kurt, blocking his view of the TV. “What it’s like for boys. I was wondering and -”

He’s scared. It’s not just a drumbeat in his chest now it’s an entire orchestra playing his body, slamming on the keys, breaking all the strings, and Blaine just keeps inching forward, making the music louder.

“And I looked it up.”

Scared as he is, he can’t move, can’t bring himself to stop this, stop whatever it is Blaine’s doing. If it were anyone else, he would. Scary as it is, if it’s Blaine, it’s somehow easier.

Whatever it is Blaine’s doing.

“What -” His own voice sounds foreign, strange, too loud and too deep. “What did you find?”

Blaine takes Kurt’s hand, and Blaine is trembling, skin warm but his touch cold, a shock when his fingers thread through Kurt’s.

Blaine’s never been this close before, not like this, not with this feeling - whatever feeling this is - running up and through their fingers.

“Kurt, can we try something?” Blaine asks, and he doesn’t sound like Blaine, doesn’t feel like Blaine. “Together?”

Alone is scary. Kurt can’t do alone. Can’t even walk through the halls alone. But he’s never truly been alone, not since he was two years old, because he’s always had Blaine and they’ve always been together. And together, things aren’t so bad, aren’t so dark and twisted and wrong.

So whatever it is Blaine’s doing, as scary as it feels between their hands, he trusts him. He nods, thinks he says an audible ‘yes’ but maybe it’s just his breath, and lets Blaine lean him back.

“They can - we can -” Blaine says, eyes trailing up from Kurt’s stomach to his face. He lets go of Kurt, uses his now-free hand to hold onto Kurt’s shoulder as he kneels over him, breathing soft and quiet and the noise from the movie is a low hum of static now. “Like this.”

He doesn’t breathe, keeps it all trapped in, mind ringing and screaming but he lets Blaine place a hand over his stomach, lets him lead it down, and down.

“Blaine.” Maybe he whispers it, maybe he screams it, maybe he doesn’t know what else he’s supposed to say. It feels like he should be touching Blaine back, so he holds his shoulders, not to push him away but to keep him right there, just there.

Blaine’s eyes are flashing, shiny and bright, no trace of a smile anywhere. His hand starts to pull at the drawstring of Kurt’s pajama pants, and Kurt’s stuck between focusing on that and focusing on how Blaine’s chest is rising and falling so fast.

Then his hand is so much closer to Kurt than it’s ever been before, and it’s Blaine’s touch but it burns Kurt like a hot iron brand and Kurt jolts, shouts, jumps and twists and shoves Blaine away with whatever working muscles he has.

“No - no, stop!” He stands up and falls back onto the bed, hardly able to hold himself up with one arm, using the other to clutch at his racing heart. “What - what are you doing?”

He’s afraid to look at Blaine, afraid he’ll see somebody else entirely.

“I’m sorry,” Blaine cries, sitting on the bed but giving Kurt a small gap of distance. “I’m - I’m sorry, Kurt, I just -”

“That’s - I can’t.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Why -”

“I wanted to - to know and there’s no one else I - I trust more than you.”

Kurt scrunches his eyes closed and tries to keep himself from crying, from feeling sick, from feeling so wrong and dirty. “I trust you too, Blaine,” he gasps, still clawing at his chest. “But that’s just too - I want to go home.”

“I’m sorry,” Blaine says again, and places his hand over Kurt’s on the bed. “I’ll walk you home. Can I walk you home?”

He nods, and he doesn’t repel Blaine’s hand away, because his touch doesn’t feel wrong.

None of that felt wrong. Not Blaine’s hand, or his skin. None of that felt off or scary or bad -

It’s just what Blaine was going to do with his touch that scares him. It’s just that he’s not ready to be like the adults in those movies, not ready to do stuff like that.

Blaine tells his mom that Kurt doesn’t feel well and carries his backpack for him, both of them walking in silence across the front yard until they get up to Kurt’s porch.

“I’m sorry,” Blaine says for the hundredth time, looking small, shoulders low. “I promise I - I never wanted to scare you.”

Kurt looks at his feet, and thinks the scariest part is that one day, maybe . . .

“It’s okay. It’s not you that scares me.”

Blaine smiles, looking relieved. “I know it’s different and - and weird. But I meant what I said, Kurt.”

It’s how Blaine’s looking at him now. Like all those times over the past few years that made Kurt stop whatever he was doing, leaving his mind a bit puzzled as to why Blaine was looking at him like that. It’s that, that look, that has Kurt more scared now than he was just minutes before. So scared he’s speechless, left without a thought.

A few moments, a few seconds, a few more kickstarts to the brain, and Kurt finally asks, “Meant what?”

Scared because he maybe kind of knows the reason for that look.

“There’s no one else I trust more than you.”

-

If he’s quiet, sometimes he can hear Blaine play the guitar, sometimes the piano, all the way from where he is in his house.

Or maybe it’s that Blaine’s music never fully leaves his head, always there in the background.

What Blaine doesn’t know is that Kurt sings all the time at home, soft hums or loud notes that he thinks he can hold for an impressively long time. He thinks about the song Blaine first got him to sing, and he’s been practicing it, memorizing the lyrics and it’s strange because when certain words leave his lips he forgets what comes next, forgets how to even sing in the first place.

They talk about joining the glee club together. Rachel, Tina and Mercedes are in it, and it’d make Kurt even more of a loser but at least they’d be together. And really, it’s another opportunity to hear Blaine sing, and he can’t pass that up.

-

Being in Blaine’s room with the door closed is a moment of panic at first, but only because he knows what _could_ happen when the door is closed now. What they could do.

It quickly goes away when Blaine takes out his guitar. “Sam taught me the chords to a Coldplay song, want to hear?”

Kurt takes his eyes away from the display of trophies along the top of Blaine’s dresser, looks at Blaine and has to replay the question in his mind, because he wasn’t really listening.

“Can you play that other song first?” he asks, shyly, sitting down on the bed with his back straight and hands folded in his lap. “The one we sang together?”

Blaine looks like he scowls, brow furrowing. “The one by Jewel? Why? It’s too easy.”

The panic returns, this time like ice at the base of his spine, crackling and freezing all the way up to his brain. With wide eyes and his mouth open, Kurt snaps out of the cold, says quickly, “You probably need to warm up first, before tackling a more difficult song, right?”

Blaine’s scowl turns into a smirk, shoulders shrugging as he strums a few chords.

“If you want to sing with me Kurt, that’s all you had to say.”

He turns red, ducks his head, looks away, but Blaine starts to play, starts to sing, and it would be physically damaging to Kurt to keep his eyes anywhere else.

So he looks and he sings too, and it all comes easily, and not because he’s been practicing.

It’s easier this time around, but it’s harder too, harder because Blaine doesn’t need to look at the strings to play anymore so instead he looks at Kurt. Harder because the words he’s singing are the same words that his heart chants sometimes, the words like a secret that Kurt didn’t even know he was holding onto.

The words that Kurt sings like he was meant to.

-

It can’t be a coincidence that the next month at school his entire grade is rallied into the gym for sex education.

He braces himself for the worst, for graphic pictures and even more graphic words, already red in the face and close to passing out.

In reality, it’s nothing. No graphic words even leave the lady’s lips, she just drones on and on about teenage pregnancy, and it’s once she holds up a condom and starts to talk about its uses that their principal bolts up from his place in the bleachers and shuts the whole thing down.

He leaves feeling entirely unsettled, actually.

So it’s over dinner that night that he tells his dad about it, nauseous and nervous in his stomach. “We um, we had an assembly at school today.”

His dad looks up from his plate, says with his mouth full, “Oh yeah? About what?”

He nearly throws up, but holds it down, sips at his water and breathes out shakily, “Sex ed.”

His dad coughs madly, splutters, grabbing his own glass of water and taking large gulps. “How - how did that go?”

Now they’re both red, now they both look sick, but Kurt powers through it, has to shake off this uneasy feeling.

“It wasn’t that informative,” he says quietly, eyes burning holes into the table. “They didn’t even get close to explaining what it’s like for - for boys.”

His dad frowns, sets his fork down. “They didn’t?”

“Well - not boys . . and boys.”

His dad promptly stands up from the table, grabbing his plate and throwing it into the sink, head shaking and face still flushed. “Kurt, you’re still pretty young. Don’t you think you should wait a while before filling your head up with that stuff?”

Shame eats away at the sickness, the guilt for even feeling remotely curious. “It’s just that . .” he says, hands curling and then uncurling, lifting his gaze up to meet his dad’s. “Blaine seems to know so much already and -”

His dad’s face goes so starkly white that Kurt nearly jumps from the table.

There’s no restraint or hesitance when his dad splutters, yelps, _accuses_ , “Are you and Blaine having - having sex?”

Sirens go off, alarms go off, loud and shrill in his head and all around him, red and blue lights flashing and flashing and blinding him -

“ _What?_ ” He screams it probably, shouts it so loud all the strength in his body leaves him. “Dad - _what?_ ”

His dad grabs at his chest, hand over his heart, breathing deep and heavy. “Jeez, Kurt. You almost gave me a heart attack!”

Kurt grabs at his own chest, breathing just as loud. “I think I’m going into cardiac arrest.”

“Don’t - don’t scare me like that,” his dad pants, eyes meeting Kurt’s before quickly looking away. “I think we’re done talking about this for now.”

-

Despite all that, and despite the painful embarrassment that stuck with them for another week or so, despite the red-faced, awkward dinners they had to endure, Kurt still came home from school one day to find a small stack of pamphlets placed on his desk.

-

**Fifteen**

“Can you hand me a pencil?” Blaine asks from his bed, pointing to a drawer in the desk Kurt’s sitting at.

Kurt spins around in the chair, sliding open the drawer to search for a pencil, finding one and handing it back to Blaine. “You should really organize this thing.”

Blaine shrugs and goes back to his homework. “My organizing skills are not on par with yours, I’m afraid.”

“That’s your way of getting me to do it for you, isn’t it?” Kurt asks, smirking, and looks back to the drawer, stuffed with paper and small knickknacks, the mess of it all contrasting harshly with the rest of Blaine’s room.

He pulls out the majority of it, settling it all on the floor, placing the papers into certain piles, neatly arranging all the writing utensils he finds.

There’s an odd amount of glitter coating everything, small red and purple flecks that stick to his hands, the floor, so he digs deeper, pulls out more papers.

Somewhere near the bottom of the drawer, years and years and years of junk having been piled over it, is a card made of construction paper in the shape of a heart.

The lines are surprisingly clean, stickers and lace and glitter crafted with perfection, and Kurt already knows exactly what it is, exactly when he made it, and he remembers the painful execution of it all, the perfection he strived for.

He turns it over, afraid to see what he wrote, afraid to see the awful penmanship of a five year old.

Slightly crooked letters, curving in the right spots but nowhere near the grace of his mother’s, is a message that burns his face, makes him quickly turn it back over.

_I love you._

“I can’t believe you still have this,” Kurt says, looking at Blaine and holding up the card.

Blaine looks up from his textbook, eyes squinting at what Kurt’s holding before his whole face lights up, grin wide. “It must have made me really happy.”

Kurt shakes his head, placing the card in one of the piles. “Not my best work, I have to say.”

Blaine’s still smiling, grin falling into a simple line, the kind of smile that doesn’t need to be wide to be bright, and he says quietly, “It still makes me really happy.”

He arranges more papers, plays around with the pencils. Ten years of life stashed away in one little drawer, and if Kurt tries, he can remember it all. Every moment and second that he’s spent with Blaine, and how they’ve changed so much through the years. They never had to worry about other people, other problems, just had to pick up their toys and play.

Fifteen years old is perhaps a bit too old to be playing with Power Rangers still.

He asks distantly, quiet like he’s really asking himself, “Do you ever miss how easy it used to be? How it used to be just us?”

Blaine never looks up, writing away, smile not completely gone yet. “As far as I’m concerned, it’s still just us.”

Kurt laughs dryly, eyebrows raised. “Yeah, and Sam and Rachel.”

Blaine does look up then, and he doesn’t have to meet Kurt’s eyes to be looking right into him.

“Nope. Still just us.”

-

He caused it. It’s his fault. His damn need to be liked, to be appreciated, he must get it from Blaine, but it’s not Blaine’s fault it’s _his_.

He overheard Finn Hudson talking with another boy in glee club, saying he cracked the windshield of his mom’s car and now he has to find a way to pay for it.

For some reason, for some unexplainable stupid reason, he stuck his nose in their conversation and chirped, “My dad owns a garage, maybe he can help you.”

So Finn smiled, said, “Thanks, man!” and brought his mom and her car into the shop that Saturday.

That was two weeks ago.

His dad and Finn’s mom have already gone on two dates, his dad now getting ready to leave for their third.

He doesn’t know how to feel.

Maybe this is how his dad felt when Kurt first wanted to invite Blaine to Friday night dinner. Betrayal, the break of tradition, the change of something so important.

But this is so entirely different, because his dad isn’t breaking tradition, he’s erasing an entire person, an entire life, replacing her love with someone else’s, giving his love to someone else.

It feels like yesterday. If he lets himself go to that place, lets his guard down and lets his mind fill, then he’s eight years old again and feeling it all over again. Doesn’t his dad feel the same way? How could he ever hold another person’s hand knowing it isn’t hers.

One hard part is knowing there’s nothing he can do to stop it, just has to let it happen. The other hard part is knowing he’s being selfish and immature, that he should be a supportive son, should be happy for his dad, but he can’t get rid of the voice in his head saying that this is wrong, that this isn’t supposed to happen.

Being in the house just makes it worse, the walls he’s been living in all his life suddenly looking unfamiliar, strange, so he sits on his porch and watches the sunset, because at least he already knows that will be different than every other day he’s lived.

Tonight it’s pink and orange, not strong gold like it was yesterday. Blue is beginning to creep in, threatening to take over daylight in a matter of minutes.

He shivers, fall air pricking at his arms, but he can’t bring himself to go inside.

The Anderson’s screen door makes a sound, but Kurt’s heart doesn’t even budge, he doesn’t look, not until there are footsteps up the walkway and Blaine’s presence acts like a magnet, drawing his attention up.

The remaining sunlight shines behind Blaine, and Kurt has to smile. “Hi.”

Blaine takes the greeting as invitation, walking up the porch stairs until he’s next to Kurt.

“What are you doing out here?” Blaine asks, taking Kurt’s cold hand and enclosing it between his own. “Making sure your dad doesn’t break curfew?”

He groans, nudging Blaine in the side. “No. I’m thinking.”

Blaine nudges back, his body bringing forward warmth that Kurt hadn’t really realized he was missing. “Thinking about what?”

He shrugs, bites down on his lip, because if he vocalizes it he’ll sound insane, and pitiful, and he knows he’s in the wrong, he just wishes somebody could explain _why_ to him.

“About my dad,” he says quietly, letting Blaine twine their fingers together. “About my mom. I’m having troubles wrapping my mind around it still.”

How do you just - move on? How do you ever live fully and normally after something like that happens? It’s not right, they shouldn’t, they shouldn’t have ever even tried after she left because that’s not fair to her.

“It takes time,” Blaine says easily. “You don’t have to rush yourself.”

Time. Kurt laughs, spitefully, angrily shaking his head and glaring up the sky. “It takes time? Tell that to my dad! He’s already moved on to the next best thing, like she didn’t even exist!”

Blaine remains stoic, hand over Kurt’s, only looking slightly confused after a moment. “I thought you’d be happy for him? He’s been given another chance to love, isn’t that a good thing?”

He quickly takes his hand away, arms folding tight over his chest and he spits out, all of his buried thoughts coming through, “Why does he even need to love again? Isn’t loving my mom enough?”

Blaine straightens, looking more stern but not menacing. “Love is limitless, Kurt,” he says. “Can’t he love both of them?”

“No, he can’t,” Kurt whispers, head down, throat scratching as he breathes. “If he loves Carole, then how did he ever love my mom in the first place?”

“This doesn’t take away from that -”

“It’s not fair.” None of it’s fair. His mom isn’t even here to defend herself, to put up a fight, if she were here none of this would be happening so they need to act like she is because it’s _not fair_. “She loved him so much. She would never - want this.”

“Kurt,” Blaine says, finding his hand again. “I think your dad is trying to find a way to deal with this too. It wasn’t his decision for her to go, and I think he would have loved her anyways, even if he knew. So what matters is that he loved her when she was here, right?”

“Doesn’t - doesn’t everything happen for a reason?” His voice has lost its backbone, its foundation, crumbling with every word. “It’s not fair that she had to - to die and he got to just keep going. If he gets to love again, then who’s supposed to love her?”

That’s what he’s stuck on. Does she just get forgotten now? Do they act like she never existed? He’s tried that and it didn’t work. His mom was the most important person in the world, and she was beautiful and perfect and he doesn’t understand, a person like that deserves to be loved forever and if his dad has moved on then he clearly wasn’t the one meant to do it.

“Who was meant to be her soulmate if it wasn’t my dad?”

Blaine looks so scared, like he’s taken on Kurt’s questions and fears so Kurt doesn’t have to, eyes wide and bottom lip trembling, hand shaking around Kurt’s.

Voice so quiet yet so brilliant, Blaine says, “Well maybe . . . maybe you were, Kurt.”

He starts crying, fully, doesn’t bother holding it back and it hurts but Blaine quickly grabs him and pulls him closer.

It all gets darker and darker. Gone is the light from the sunset and now it’s all black, not a star visible, and he asks through his tears, “Then who’s mine?”

Blaine somehow manages to pull him closer, and he whispers back, “Me.”


	2. 16. a

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Growing up doesn't have to mean growing apart. 
> 
> But maybe it's different for them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, well, hello. For a lil bit there I actually thought I wouldn't keep posting, or write for Klaine again, but I've found my way back. Even if nobody is reading, I worked really hard for 2 years on this, so I'm not letting go quuuite yet.
> 
> Anywho, this chapter is a lot rougher than the previous one. It's not an easy read. Warnings: The canon events of Karofsky happen, Sebastian is prominent in this chapter, Kurt struggles with multiple things and his depression is heavily described. I'm awful at tagging and giving warnings so if you want to know more, please don't hesitate to ask.

**Sixteen**

Turning sixteen feels like he should feel older. Fifteen sounds childish, awkward, not quite a kid but not quite a teenager. Sixteen sounds so official.

He doesn’t feel older. He just wants to feel younger.

Sixteen is that scary place of statistics. Sixteen is where you first get drunk, or where you first start to smoke, or where you get your first job or when you’re first able to drive.

He doesn’t feel that old at all.

Quinn Fabray is sixteen. She’s also eight months pregnant.

He finds he thinks about that a lot, watching her walk down the halls with one hand over her stomach and her chin lifted and her eyes straight forward, just trying to get by.

She doesn’t look older. He wonders if she feels like it.

They’re all supposed to be children, but they’re living the nightmares of adults.

His nightmare consists of getting shoved into a locker. Hard. Just like every other time.

It hurts. Just like every other time.

He pretends it doesn'’t. Just like every other time.

Nobody notices.

Just like every other freaking time -

But then, just like every other time, Blaine is there, his hands warm and safe and strong as they wrap around Kurt’s arms, pulling him up until he’s standing straight.

They’re living the nightmares of adults but he can’t feel older because he’s still dealing with the nightmares of childhood.

But Blaine makes him almost forget about it.

Blaine looks him over, brushing off his arms before sliding his hands back up to his shoulders. “Kurt, I just - I just want to give that guy a piece of my mind,” he says, heated and angry, his soft eyes burning furious.

Kurt laughs and rolls his eyes. “And then he’d take that piece and crush it with his _bare hands_ , Blaine.”

The hurt has worn off, the frustration has flared out, but Blaine keeps his hands on Kurt. “I don’t like him touching you.”

Him. Karofsky. Just like every other time.

Kurt doesn’t either, but he can’t stop it, and neither can Blaine.

He realizes he’s drifted off a bit, standing there thinking with Blaine’s hands still on him. He looks at them curiously, one eyebrow lifting, because he doesn’t need Blaine to be holding him now, not really.

Blaine seems to realize, clearing his throat and taking a step back.

“Let me walk you to class?”

He nods, tries to force himself out of this trance. “Okay.”

By the time they get to Kurt’s class, he can’t remember what it’s like to be touched wrongly, because all he can think about are Blaine’s hands.

-

Maybe it’s like a defective piece of technology.

Like dropping your phone one too many times. It’s bound to stop working properly. It’s bound to stop being as responsive to touches, stop functioning the way it’s supposed to.

It’s from breaking too much.

It’s from Karofsky's touch.

He just doesn’t know how to - to be normal. To act normal. To hold his head the right way. To take a step forward and not ten steps back.

He feels wrong. Every inch of his skin feels like it no longer belongs to him. Like he’s just a few thoughts inside somebody else’s body, no way out.

This wouldn’t be a problem if he didn’t actually need his body.

Mr. Schue pats him on the shoulder one day, and Kurt nearly crumbles with how hard and fast he flinches. When Mr. Schue frowns at him, he has to respond with, “You just spooked me, Mr. Schue, that’s all.”

It’s more than that.

Rachel hugs him in the way that Rachel does, throwing her arms up and pulling him down, like there’s no difference in height between them. He can’t remember how to hug back, his arms hanging there useless until he figures out where to put them.

Two more years of this. He has two more years. One more day seems and sounds like eternity how is he supposed to last two more years in this godforsaken hell hole -

When he lets his mind fall silent, it all comes back to that, that train of thought, wondering and questioning his own existence because two years is a long time. He sits there at the lunch table with the rest of the glee club and tries to come up with some sort of way to make it, to survive it, to endure it because he needs his body because -

He hears deep, obnoxious laughter and just knows where and who it’s coming from, doesn’t have to be looking to see him. He goes stiff, rigid, mind blanking, system freezing, just like defective technology.

Might as well throw him out, start over. No good.

Somebody’s hand covers his, skin warm and smooth, and Kurt’s first reaction is to flinch, pull away, but something in him pauses for a moment.

“You okay?”

Kurt could hear the words coming from Blaine’s mouth before Blaine even said them.

He turns to Blaine, right next to him, and gives him a tight-lipped smile. “Perfect.”

Like defective technology, his body starts working then out of nowhere, and he starts hearing real sounds and feeling real things. The rest of the world kicks back in, the glee club loud with their jokes, their laughter, all the other students moving around them creating a background hum.

From across the table, Artie jumps in and says, “If you’re perfect then can I dig into that mac and cheese?”

He unfreezes himself and pushes his tray over. “Knock yourself out.”

Blaine’s still staring at him weird, both eyebrows raised, his hand still over Kurt’s. “Did you want me to get you something else?”

He smiles and shakes his head. “No, I’m fine,” he says, because he is fine.

Blaine only looks unconvinced for a second before he turns back to his food, his hand hesitant to leave Kurt’s.

The bell rings sometime later, and Kurt barely hears it, just gets up and follows everyone else towards the doors, but those hands are back on him, warm and solid, stopping him.

The cafeteria continues to empty out but Blaine spins Kurt back around, pulls him over to the side and away from the outgoing traffic, and looks at him in that way that he always has looked at him; open and pleading and fascinated by _something_.

“We’re gonna be late,” Kurt says, much more cold and distant than he intended.

Blaine puts his hands on Kurt’s shoulders, fingers digging in, eyes still holding the same kind of gaze. “I just - I need to remind you, Kurt, that I’m - I’m here for you.”

Kurt frowns. Out of all the words Blaine could say those just sound out of place. “How could I forget that?”

It’s the last thing I ever could.

A group of red pass them, football players, big and tall and threatening, and they both stare after them until they pass through the doors.

Blaine looks back at Kurt, and somehow he finds a way to look more desperate, more scared. He squeezes Kurt’s shoulders and says, “You know how.”

With only one person across from him, with only one person to look at, he realizes Blaine’s not a kid anymore.

This feels like that though, being a kid in the cubby room with Blaine’s hands on his shoulders and Blaine’s courage guiding the way. But they aren’t kids. Oh no. Oh, they’re very much adults.

Blaine’s not bigger than him anymore, he’s just the slightest bit shorter actually.

But Blaine’s hands are bigger now. He has muscles. He’s got eyes that see and understand instead of eyes that see and wonder.

He still holds Kurt the exact same way.

And just like then, Kurt smiles, because if Blaine’s here, and if Blaine was there, then maybe he’ll be okay now.

“I won’t.” He looks right at Blaine, and forgets about malfunctioning, because he works just fine with Blaine.

Blaine finally takes his hands away and smiles, nods his head, and says like he was just holding his breath for ten minutes, “Good.”

As long as he has Blaine, just like then, just like now, then maybe the next two years won’t be so bad.

Maybe.

-

Sixteen is actually getting a say in things that could completely disrupt your entire life.

Sort of . . .

His dad tells him it’s going to happen eventually. He wants to move into a new house with Finn and Carole.

He gives Kurt a few days to think about it.

All Kurt can think is no no no.

Because this house is filled with memories, every wall is painted with them, his mom lived here, and he’s not ready to leave them yet.

Then there’s the house next door, also filled with memories, also painted with every feeling Kurt’s ever felt before, because Blaine lives there.

It’s scary being sixteen. It was scary being six and eight and ten and twelve, but it was manageable and it was possible because Blaine was _right there_.

His dad asks again a few days later. “It’s gonna happen one day, Kurt, but what do you think?”

Kurt stands his ground, and says confidently, “Not yet.” And then not so confidently; “I . . . I don’t want to leave Blaine.”

His dad stares at him, but nothing mean or judgemental crosses his face.

“Okay, kiddo, not yet.”

-

His idea of heaven is a new issue of Vogue or some other magazine and nothing but hours to read through it and absorb everything, go into another world where the things he loves matter and he doesn’t have to be afraid because of it.

His idea of heaven is reading said magazine with Blaine, because Blaine gets it.

They both lay back on Blaine’s bed, taking turns reading the articles out loud, pointing at things they find revolting, ripping out pages they want to keep for inspiration.

He’s halfway through an article on the power of spin class when he stops, looks down, just now realizing that Blaine’s been tracing lines up and down his arm. Just a barely there touch, light and soft, one fingertip dragging up the length of his wrist to his elbow.

“What are you doing?” he asks quietly, voice catching in his throat.

Blaine stops, looks up from where his head is on the pillow, and for one quick millisecond, looks horrified. “Oh, sorry,” he says, pulling his hand back. “Nothing.”

Warmth hits and floods his body, from his toes to his ears. He can’t explain it.

“If you’re wondering how I get my skin so smooth, it’s Jergens.”

Blaine grins. “Drugstore? I never would have guessed.”

He smiles down at him, and when Blaine inches closer until there’s no more space between them, Kurt can’t complain.

-

“Oh, Kurt!”

He’s seconds from walking into his classroom when he hears Blaine, turning around to see him running down the hall.

Blaine quickens his step until he’s in front of Kurt, out of breath as he says, “I just wanted to tell you before class starts that I don’t need a ride home. My parents are coming.”

Parents at school are never a good thing, so he frowns. “Oh, why?”

Blaine shrugs. “We have a meeting with Figgins after school. Probably about college applications.”

He shouldn’t feel disappointment, because it’s just a few minutes in the grand scheme of things without Blaine. He still feels it though.

“Boo, okay,” he sighs, mouth tugging to the side in a wry sort of smile. “Are you still coming over for dinner after?”

Blaine’s still red in the face and panting as he grins. “Always, Kurt.”

Before Kurt can respond or smile back, Blaine leans in and gives him a side hug, slides one arm down until he’s pressing his hand against the small of Kurt’s back.

Before Kurt can even process any of this, Blaine gives him another smile and then takes off for his own classroom.

The warning bell rings.

He can still feel Blaine’s hand, can’t shake it off. Not because he’s shocked or startled by how close he was, but because he feels warm where he was, like his body was just waiting for Blaine to touch him there.

He can’t sit still throughout any of his classes.

-

Carole and Finn have started coming to Friday night dinners, and Kurt wasn’t allowed to complain, because he started the break in tradition by inviting Blaine all those many years ago.

Now he knows how his dad felt then, at least.

Dinner is ready by six.

At six-fifteen not a plate has been served.

At six-thirty Finn finally clears his throat and speaks up, asking, “Hey dude, is your boyfriend gonna show up soon? ‘Cause I’m starving.”

Kurt’s defenses immediately rise, his eyes sharp on Finn and his tongue even sharper as he spits, “He’s not my boyfriend, Finn, and yes he’s coming, hold your horses. It’s not our fault you have the combined appetite of ten lions.”

Finn sinks back in his seat at the table and starts to fiddle with his fork.

His dad is the next to speak a few minutes later; “Me and Carole we’re gonna catch a movie, Kurt, we need to get going soon.”

He could _scream_.

This is Blaine. They can and will wait for him.

“He’s coming!” he shouts, and looks at his father angrily. “He wouldn’t just - not show up!”

He wouldn’t.

“Okay, okay,” his dad says, hands raised in surrender. “We’ll give him another fifteen minutes.”

They end up giving him thirty.

He piles more on Finn’s plate and says, “Don’t you dare ask for dessert.”

At sometime past eight o’clock he knows he should give up on waiting, go up to his room and pretend to be fine and just forget this, because he knows Blaine wouldn’t do this intentionally, wouldn’t do this to hurt him.

But still.

If something were wrong - and something must be wrong because this is _Blaine_ \- then wouldn’t he tell him? Wouldn’t he call or text or find a way to let Kurt know?

It’s that he’s hurt over. It’s that one little instigating thought that won’t let Kurt get up off the couch and retire to his room. So he sits there watching some stupid comedy show with Finn, counting down each minute that goes by.

“Did you want me to leave, or . . ?” Finn asks, breaking their awkward-but-normal silence. “You seem kinda upset.”

Kurt immediately snaps up straight, into that defensive-spastic mode that Finn always puts him in. “I’m not upset! I’m just -”

Well -

“Upset?” Finn asks, not really a question, smiling knowingly at Kurt.

“No I’m -” He can’t even argue it anymore, he’s upset down to the marrow of every single bone. “If your best friend didn’t show up for something he’s always showed up for, without any explanation at all, wouldn’t you be upset?”

Finn lets out a mix of a snort and a laugh, looking at Kurt like he’s got three heads. “Not as much as you are now.”

Kurt recoils, wraps his arms around himself and looks back at the TV. “Something’s wrong,” he mutters, ignoring the awful sense of betrayal that’s twisting up his gut.

Finn just keeps staring at him, now looking more confused, like another head just grew. “Why don’t you just call him?”

“Because he would have called me if he wanted me to know!”

He sounds ridiculous, he knows he does, but he can’t stop it, the sour taste on his tongue attacking all his words.

Finn remains silent, and when Kurt finally turns to look at him again he’s met with a smirk.

“What?”

Finn shrugs. “Nothing.”

Kurt practically squawks, “ _What?_ ”

Finn’s smirk tugs to the side until it fades, looking deep in thought as he says, “This just doesn’t sound like how best friends work, I guess.”

It doesn’t settle. Finn’s words lay on his skin but don’t sink in, just stay there, making him think, making him feel wrong. He can’t think of a response, because he doesn’t know what he means.

“Anyways dude,” Finn says, breaking himself out of his thoughts. “I don’t wanna be around when Burt and my mom get home, so I’m gonna head out . . . unless you want me to stay, or something.”

He supposes he should feel touched that Finn seems to care, in whatever way Finn is capable of caring.

He can only really think about one thing though.

“I’ll be alright. Thanks, Finn.”

Finn looks around awkwardly, like he’s trying to figure out how to go, pats Kurt’s arm even more awkwardly before finally grabbing his sweater and leaving.

He knows he should get up and go to bed and give up and get Blaine out of his head, but he can’t make himself. He checks his phone, no missed calls or texts, and keeps waiting.

Then just when he’s about to call it quits, there are three taps on the front door.

Three taps, no rhythm, no pattern, no beat.

He still knows who it is.

His heart’s up in his throat and his hands don’t want to move, already shaking as he twists the doorknob and pulls the door open. Everything about this screams _wrong wrong wrong_ and he doesn’t want to give in to it.

It’s Blaine, he knew it would be, standing there on the porch with his head down and his hands behind his back.

He shakes his head in disapproval, in pain, in dread. “Finn already ate what was to be your dinner. I’d apologize but,” he says, pauses, looks down at his watch that says it’s well past nine o’clock. “It’s been three hours.”

There isn’t one single emotion crossing Blaine’s face. He just looks shattered. The broken pieces of what was once a million different feelings.

The face of somebody who’s never believed in ghosts but has just been haunted.

Kurt goes quiet.

Wrong wrong wrong -

“I know.” Blaine chokes out, looking down at his feet. “I’m sorry.”

And even though Kurt still feels all those bad things, the way Blaine sounds and looks feels even worse, so he can’t be mad right now. He opens the door wider and beckons Blaine forward. “Come in.”

Blaine doesn’t budge, just makes another noise that sounds like a choke.

“I can’t.”

Nothing crashes yet, but Kurt can tell it’s coming, can feel it all around them. He shakes his head and asks, “What?”

“Kurt.” His own name has never sounded so wrong before, and it’s Blaine saying it. “We need to - talk.”

Dread makes him feel sick. He could throw up at any second, could pass out and never wake up. “What’s wrong?” he asks, voice low, sounding much more calm than he feels.

“Um -” Blaine’s shattered face seals back up, cracked lines around his eyes, his mouth, still not looking right. “I -”

Blaine is panicking, and Kurt can’t remember a single time Blaine’s ever panicked because Blaine is brave and Blaine is strong and if Blaine is scared then Kurt is _terrified_.

Blaine shuts his eyes and takes a step back. “I can’t.”

Kurt steps forward, closes the door behind him as he moves out onto the porch, reaching for Blaine’s arm. “Anything, you can tell me anything, you know that, Blaine -” He’s pleading, begging, bordering on hysterical and he can hear it but he can’t stop it because Blaine isn’t making him stop.

Blaine laughs, but it doesn’t sound happy, it sounds mocking and twisted and spiteful.

“You won’t want to hear this.”

He stops moving forward, stops reaching out, just stops because he’s seconds from crying out of pure fear. He says more quietly, more pleadingly, “Tell me.”

Blaine turns and looks at the steps, says, “We should sit down.”

He sounds so calm and so dark and so - he sounds like surrender, the panic gone.

Kurt can’t not panic, he can’t be calm, something is _wrong_.

“I’m not sitting down! Tell me what’s wrong -”

“Kurt!” Blaine yells, and he never yells. “Just - come on. Please?”

Blaine never has to ask him to do anything. Kurt admits defeat and sits down on the top step, almost thankful because it’s then that he realizes he’s still shaking.

It’s a few seconds before Blaine sits down too, a small space away from Kurt. He looks at Kurt’s hand between them for an even longer stretch of seconds, like he’s actually debating on whether or not he should take it.

They settle into tense silence, never been so quiet between them before. So quiet all he can hear are crickets somewhere out there, a nearby car passing by, thinks he can hear every single star up above them because nothing down here is shining anymore. Kurt hasn’t ever been so scared.

But he has to be brave. If Blaine can’t be, then Kurt has to. “Blaine?” he asks, hates how scared he still sounds. “Whatever it is, we can figure it out.” He moves closer, doesn’t want any space between them. “We always do, right?”

Blaine laughs again, in that same doubtful way, and sighs, “Not this time.”

Blaine sounding hopeless makes as much sense as the sun being blue.

“What?”

“It’s already been decided.”

He squeezes Blaine’s hand harder, has to hold on. “What has?”

Blaine just breathes for a bit, looking drained already, and Kurt realizes then that whatever it is Blaine’s about to tell him, Blaine’s already cried over it.

A few more seconds pass, Blaine looks out at the empty street, up at the night sky, but not at Kurt.

“You know how my dad works in Westerville?” Blaine asks, looking straight ahead again, his hand just barely holding Kurt’s. “And how my mom’s family is from there?”

He knows Blaine’s not really asking, because Kurt does know that and Blaine knows it.

“And there’s this school. A private school. Dalton Academy.”

He starts to shake his head, wants to move away from Blaine as if that will derail whatever it is Blaine’s about to say.

But then Blaine smiles, forced and wide and made of artificial light, gripping Kurt’s hand so much harder as he says quickly, “It’s not that far, only - only two hours or so. I could leave there right after class on Fridays and we’d have the whole weekend and -”

“Blaine, what are you talking about?” Kurt shouts, and he’s crying, oh god he’s definitely crying because he knows _exactly_ what Blaine’s talking about.

“And we graduate in two years anyway so maybe it’s better for this to happen now -”

“Blaine!”

Blaine rips his hand away from Kurt, turns his body to face him and looks so angry and betrayed as he yells, “I’m moving, Kurt!”

He thought the world was quiet before, but it truly goes silent now.

Dead air. Not a cricket, not a car, not a singular far away star.

Kurt knows what being hurt feels like, what it’s like to be shoved and pushed and hit and hated, but this might just be worse than all of that, this is the worst kind of pain. Because the one fact he knows right away, the one feeling that settles into every vein like it’s trying to change his DNA, is that Blaine won’t be there.

Nothing could ever hurt more.

He stays quiet, like he always does when he’s hurt, but also because he can’t say anything to that because he never thought he would have to.

Blaine’s quiet too, looking down at his hands, breathing in odd, choppy waves.

“I’ve been enrolled for my junior year. It works out for everyone. My dad can be closer to work and my mom can be closer to family,” Blaine says, in a way that sounds rehearsed, or maybe like it’s being repeated, like he’s just saying exactly what’s been told to him. “We move on the first of July. I start August twenty-third.”

It feels like he can’t breathe, really. He has to look completely away from Blaine, turning his head to the side, only to be met with Blaine’s house where Blaine lives but where he won’t live _anymore_.

He quickly looks back and now he really can’t breathe.

Somebody else will live there. That house is home to his every memory and every good feeling because that’s where he knows he’ll find Blaine and now -

Blaine won’t be here. Kurt needs him to be here. He’s never not been here.

“Kurt?” Blaine asks, crying too, sobbing really. “Can you say something? Please?”

He finally forces himself to breathe in deeply, then slowly breathe out. “What do you want me to say?”

Blaine blanks, looks lost in all his tears, and stammers, “I - I don’t know, that it’s going to be okay?”

Kurt heaves out his next breath and sobs, “I don’t know that though, Blaine.”

Blaine sounds seconds from hyperventilating. “I don’t either, Kurt.”

Two lost little kids, that’s what they sound like, even though they should be adults. It’s hard to categorize this into any certain age group, however, because Blaine’s been there with him since he was smaller than a child to now, and - and -

Somebody else is taking him away and breaking them apart and it doesn’t matter how old they are it’s not fair -

Kurt wants to touch him again, wants to hold his hand, but now he knows why Blaine was so hesitant before. If he takes it, then he’ll be forced to let go.

He knows what he wants to say then, because this isn’t fair and this can’t be happening and Blaine isn’t supposed to leave him. He shuts his eyes and whispers, “You’ve been there my entire life.”

“I know, Kurt.”

“Every single day that I can remember, you were there. They can’t - they can’t make you go, they can’t take you away -”

“I know, Kurt.”

Kurt looks at Blaine and cries even harder, angry and upset and at the same time, hollow. Blaine’s the one moving away, but Kurt’s the one that needs him. Kurt’s the one who has to stay next to this house and go to that school and Kurt’s the one who has to be without Blaine.

“Why is this happening?” he asks, and blinks through the tears but they keep coming. Everything happens for a reason, that’s what Blaine always tells him, but what could be the reason for this? Why?

And Blaine, who knows the answer to everything, shrugs his shoulders and cries, “I don’t know, Kurt.” He pulls Kurt closer, like he has every time Kurt’s asked him a question, as if his body can be the answer. “I don't know.”

They sit there like that for who knows how long. Kurt won’t count the minutes, because he doesn’t want to know when they’re up.

“I can’t.” He can’t. “I can’t -”

I can’t live without you right next to me because I’ve never had to before.

Blaine just pulls him even closer, hooks his chin over Kurt’s shoulder better and chokes out his breath.

“I can’t say goodbye to you.”

I don’t know how.

Blaine quickly moves back, moves even quicker to wipe his own eyes, wipe the tears from Kurt’s cheeks and hold his face. He offers Kurt a smile, and for the first time all night there’s hope in his eyes. Kurt gets lost in it.

“It’s just two hours, right? We both drive now and - and we have to try to make it be okay, okay?”

He nods even though he’s miserable in Blaine’s hands.

It’s not that. It could be across town, or across the entire universe, doesn’t matter where. Blaine is leaving and Kurt never thought he would.

Blaine is leaving, and Kurt really, really needs him to stay, because Blaine makes him forget about all the rest and Blaine’s touch is the only right one and Blaine is the only good thing about this entire place.

Two years.

He’s never spent a second without Blaine.

Two years might as well be a lifetime.

Blaine looks at Kurt’s eyes, thinking, but he doesn’t say anything, then looks down at his lips and still doesn’t say anything.

“Blaine?”

“I know this is scary,” Blaine suddenly says, looking back up to meet Kurt’s eyes. “I won’t lie, I’m scared too. But -”

Blaine sounding hopeful when the world is ending, that’s the Blaine Kurt knows, but he can’t make himself believe him.

But what?

“You’re my best friend, Kurt.” Back to his lips, Blaine stares and says quietly, “I won’t let this be goodbye, I promise.”

Kurt has to look away. Blaine makes him want to be hopeful and Blaine makes him want to believe that a blue sun could be okay, but it isn’t, so he says, “But Blaine . . . you can’t promise that.”

You don’t know that, so you can’t.

-

Blaine is leaving, and Kurt can’t stop him.

He isn’t a quitter, he hates giving up, he repels defeat, but he doesn’t see the point in trying anymore when the only reason he’s playing to win is leaving.

July is just a few weeks away, but in this day and age, getting older makes the days go by faster, and Kurt knows soon _a few weeks away_ will be now.

He can tell in the way Blaine can’t stay far away from him that he’s holding onto every single second like his life depends on it. Kurt’s always been the sentimental one, but he can’t find it in himself to hold on too.

In fact, he kind of almost wants it to be over now, he almost wants to reach that dreaded date and get it over with because every day feels like a countdown and he’s tired of being scared.

He wonders if Blaine knows just how much two hours will change things.

No more running to each other’s houses for help, for answers, for comfort or safety. No more drawing with chalk on the driveway and no more swinging on Kurt’s swing set and no more reading Vogue on Blaine’s bed and no more -

No more piano lessons, no more guitar.

Two hours changes everything.

He doesn’t tell Blaine that as he helps him pack up his room. He stays silent. He helps Blaine take down his trophies, his posters, helps him box up his clothes and all the old toys that he refuses to throw out.

He can’t stay silent, however, when they start to pack up the picture frames. They’ve been hanging on Blaine’s wall for years, but Kurt’s never really noticed them until now. All he can say is, “I was chubby back then.”

Blaine laughs and pokes him in the side. “You were growing into your skin.”

Kurt glares at him. “I was chubby, Blaine. Admit it.”

“Well what’s wrong with that?” Blaine asks, laughing, staring at Kurt in that weird way that makes Kurt believe everything he says. “You were beautiful.”

Kurt -

Blushes, caught off guard, has to look away from Blaine’s gaze, which feels somehow more intense now.

“Sure.”

Blaine takes the picture frame from him carefully, and says quietly while looking down at it, “Just like you are now.”

-

The end of the school year comes up much too quickly, and Kurt was ready for it before, was ready to get through these next two years, but that was when he thought he had Blaine.

That was when he thought he had a safe spot in the glee club, but now that’s in danger of being shut down. His entire world feels like it’s ending. Darkness is just filling in all the new empty spaces, and he doesn’t know how to get rid of it.

He doesn’t see Karofsky at any point during the last week, which he’s grateful for, because it gives him more seconds with Blaine.

He should have known there was a reason he didn’t see him.

On the last day of school, first thing in the morning, he’s greeted with a slushie, a glare, a harsh laugh and a touch that lingers longer than it should. He changes into his spare outfit and makes it through his exam and tries to shake it off, only to be face to face with him again, alone in the halls with nothing and nobody there to stop him, and Kurt wants to give in and let him.

Karofsky just stares down at him, makes him feel so small and insignificant, and says, “Heard your little buddy is leaving next year. Guess it’ll just be you and me.”

He jabs his finger into Kurt’s chest and smiles, and not in a menacing way, but in a way that holds promise.

Kurt had no idea fear could hurt like that before.

Not Karofsky, because he’s terrifying and Kurt’s every nerve hates him, but he’s not what Kurt’s entirely afraid of.

It’s just that there really won’t be anything between them. No wall between Kurt and Karofsky’s hands.

No touch to replace his and make it go away.

He never even thought of that.

Dread mixes in with that darkness, and Kurt knows Blaine can’t erase this.

-

“Shouldn’t you go home?”

Kurt hasn’t been able to take his eyes away from the window, staring at Blaine’s big, empty house all night.

Blaine lays on Kurt’s bed, his eyes closed, arms crossed behind his head. He looks so peaceful, Kurt wonders if he feels the anxiety and the dread like Kurt does.

“It’s not my home anymore.”

Kurt hums, thinks about it, hates to admit the truth but says it anyways. “It is for one more night.”

Blaine shakes his head, says with his eyes still shut, “I don’t think it ever was.”

He falls silent, has to think some more, not sure what Blaine means.

He moves tomorrow. July came up just like that. Kurt regrets ever wanting it to come. He wants to go back in time, by a few years or maybe just a few months. Wants to go back to the days of chalk and summer and thunderstorms and Blaine’s hand always in his.

“Come here?”

Kurt turns from the window, shocked to see Blaine up and sitting now, eyes open like he never once had them closed. He nods and sits down on the bed, scoots closer until they’re right next to each other, and it’s not until Blaine’s hand starts to stroke his arm that the anxiety melts away.

In this room, and in the room next door, they could always just be them. No need to brave, or strong, could just be weak and afraid and it would still be okay.

Will it still be okay?

Blaine keeps stroking Kurt’s arm, looks up at his face and asks, “Are you scared?”

Kurt chokes out his laugh. “Terrified.”

Blaine presses his lips together, stills his hand, his eyes entirely on Kurt now. “Don’t be.”

Kurt laughs again, more vicious, more - _scared_. Angry, really. The entire world is ending tomorrow how could he not be scared and how come Blaine isn’t?

“How can you say that?” Kurt cries, pulling away from Blaine. “You leave tomorrow you’re - you’re moving _away_ , Blaine -”

Blaine’s just as quick to react, rising up on his knees a bit more and latching onto Kurt’s arm, tugging him closer again. “Kurt -” he starts off, voice shaking, and Kurt knows he must be just as scared, he has to be. “You really think our friendship is that weak? That we can't handle two hours apart? You know how much you mean to me, Kurt, you know -”

“I never said that!” Kurt yells, but doesn’t try to move away again, too tired and too afraid and too comforted by Blaine’s touch. “I - I - you get to escape this place, Blaine, and I have to stay here. Without you. _That’s_ why I’m terrified.”

Blaine goes quiet, his grip on Kurt loosens. “I’m sorry,” he says so quietly, and looks guilty, looks just as tired and afraid. “I never even thought, I -”

“It’s my own fault,” Kurt says and puts his hand over Blaine’s. “I guess I should be stronger.”

Blaine frowns, tilts his head to the side and leans a bit closer. “You are.”

Kurt bites over his lip, holds his breath for a moment, lets it out and says like a secret, “Not without you.”

A low, quiet, warm sort of laugh escapes Blaine’s lips, and it’s then that Kurt realizes he’s much closer than he was seconds ago.

“When am I ever not with you?”

He’s so close, closer than he’s ever been.

His lips are just - there, and his eyes are looking right at him, and Kurt can’t look away. He can feel Blaine’s breath against his cheek, and he thinks that in all these years of knowing Blaine, he’s never felt him breathe.

It feels right. It shuts down the wrong in the world and deletes all the space around their bodies until it’s just them.

Kurt has to shut his eyes as he begs, pleads, “Don’t go.”

Blaine lets out his breath, warm against Kurt’s skin.

“I won’t.”

-

It’s all packed up. Every last box and every last memory, ready to go far, far away.

Kurt’s dad stands behind him, one hand on his shoulder, the two of them watching as the Anderson’s finish putting the last remaining boxes in their cars.

“You gonna be alright?” his dad asks distantly, or maybe directly, and Kurt just can’t hear it.

He wraps his arms around himself and says, “No.”

His dad squeezes his shoulder and lets out a helpless laugh. “I swear, sometimes it feels like the two of you are married or something.”

Kurt laughs too and shakes his head. “That’d be the day.”

They just keep watching until Blaine’s parents come over and talk to his dad, and Kurt’s sure they’re only doing it to give him a moment with Blaine.

He walks over to him slowly, not wanting to get closer because he knows soon he’ll just have to walk back, back to his house, where he will live no longer next to Blaine.

Blaine looks so much older now, Kurt’s realizing, so much bigger and taller (never as tall as him) and - not like a kid. He guesses they aren’t kids anymore. He guesses saying goodbye is something that you just have to do.

So he doesn’t cry, and he doesn’t break down, and he smiles at Blaine and says, “I guess this is it.”

Blaine smiles back. In a way that looks so much older and mature and wise, but also younger, like they’re seven again and Blaine knows _everything_. “No it isn’t.”

Kurt keeps his arms crossed, lifts one brow and asks, “Oh really?”

“This,” Blaine says, and pushes himself away from where he’s leaning on his car. “isn’t it, because I’m going to drive down here next weekend, and every weekend after that if I have to. It’ll be like I never left.”

As much as he wants to believe that, he can’t.

His heart really, really wants to. It jumps out of his chest and latches onto Blaine’s words and thrives on them.

But he still can’t.

He laughs in disbelief because he can’t have belief, and shakes his head. “Blaine, don’t you think that’s a little . . . unrealistic?”

Blaine just looks baffled, dropping the charm and the sureness. “I don’t care about realistic,” he snaps, eyes so serious Kurt almost believes him then. “I care about - about you, I’m going to try -”

“Blaine . . .”

Then Blaine looks unsure. “Unless . . . unless you don’t want to.”

Kurt reaches out and touches Blaine’s arm. Weird to be the calmer one here, when he really isn’t calm at all. “I do,” he says, and means it. “I do.”

He really, really does.

They smile at each other, looking relieved, and Kurt knows words are just words and that their meaning could so easily be wiped away, but if Blaine means it, then he’s going to believe it.

Just like he always has.

They hug each other finally. It feels like every time they’ve ever hugged, back when they were five and six and seven and so on and so on, but different. So completely and entirely different. Because Blaine is older, and bigger, and stronger, and Kurt fits in his arms even better, and because this time they have to let go.

“Is there, um,” Blaine says as he lets go, his arms immediately going behind his back. “Is there anything else you wanted to say to me?”

He looks so hopeful and confused, but Kurt can’t think of anything.

“No,” he says, a bit sadly. “You?”

Blaine looks like he has to say a lot, but he just shrugs and says, “Not yet.”

He’s not sure why, but he was almost expecting something. He shrugs too, pushes it down and away.

Then they reach the hard part.

The saying goodbye part.

The one that hurts Kurt’s heart and breaks it all apart, that part.

Like Blaine’s reading his mind, he says, “Then this is just goodbye until next weekend.”

Kurt stares back at Blaine, can’t make his mouth even form the word he hates the most. “Until next weekend.”

“. . . and every weekend after that.”

“And every weekend after that.”

One more hug, tighter than the last, longer than all the rest, and then Blaine is letting go and walking backwards, not waving at Kurt until the very last second and he has to get into the car.

Kurt’s dad comes up behind him again but doesn’t touch him this time, which Kurt is thankful for, because he doesn’t want anybody to take Blaine’s touch away yet.

Then they watch the Anderson’s pull out of the driveway, and onto the road, and Kurt can’t look but he does as Blaine quite literally moves away from him.

And it’s supposed to just be goodbye for now, until then, and yet -

It still feels like goodbye for forever.

-

Blaine is true to his word.

Next Friday he’s on Kurt’s doorstep by eight A.M, and he doesn’t leave until nearly ten o’clock on Sunday, sometimes pushing it to Monday.

That happens every weekend that July, but it’s not easy, because when Blaine leaves Kurt feels like he’s breaking. And he can’t do it every single time, it hurts too much, it makes their time actually together hurt because he’s just filled with dread dread dread.

Then August starts, and Kurt swears it was just July, and Blaine can’t visit as often because he needs to start moving into his dorm and Kurt wishes he had cherished their weekends together more than he had because the weekends without Blaine are torture.

But this is just the rest of his life, really.

So even though he doesn’t want to, he accepts it.

His dad asks how he feels about moving now, and Kurt thinks, and looks outside at that big, not-so empty house that no longer belongs to Blaine.

He says yes.

So on top of missing Blaine with every fibre of his being, and on top of moving out of his childhood home with all his mom’s memories, he also starts his junior year alone.

So alone.

It’s like he lost his colour when Blaine went away, and now he’s just a grey - _thing_ , occupying space wherever he’s accepted. Which is almost nowhere.

 _You can do this._ Blaine texts him on the first day of school. _I can’t have my phone during the day, but know I’m right there <3_

He wishes he had as much belief as Blaine.

He doesn’t even make it to lunch. He feels Karofsky’s eyes on him right away, because a summer away from him wasn’t enough time to forget how it burns, and he waits for the punishment, for the touch that’s so wrong. Karofsky just walks past him, staring, glaring, hating and scaring Kurt into immobility, into something he’s not.

That’s even worse than being touched.

_You can do this._

He can do this. He has to try and do this. Blaine’s the smartest boy alive, and Kurt trusts him, so he believes him, he can do this.

He has to.

-

He can’t do this he can’t do this he can’t do this -

It’s a chain reaction, a line of falling dominos, it’s his life falling to pieces bit by bit, and it all started all those months ago when Blaine told him he was moving.

Because then he lost his support, and by losing his support he gained fear, and by gaining that much fear his concentration and focus faded, thus making it more difficult for him to do well in class, and making it a million times harder to participate in glee club when all his muscles ache and he’s just too tired all the time.

From holding himself too tightly, keeping all his muscles and tendons and bones wound up just in case, just in case today he runs across him again, just in case today he gets shoved so hard he can never stand up again. Tired from staying up and dreading tomorrow.

But mostly he can’t focus because he’s always thinking about one thing, one person, and he’s not here anymore.

He hasn’t seen that person in over a month. He’s afraid they’ll beat their record.

But they still talk. They talk so much Kurt feels guilty about it.

Blaine tells him the schoolwork is ten times harder than anything McKinley could scrounge up, and that Warbler practice is physically and mentally intense, and that his dad wants him to join lacrosse so he’s been practicing in the morning for tryouts.

And yet every night he stays up with Kurt until Kurt can’t anymore.

He doesn’t tell Blaine about the dread, he doesn’t tell Blaine that the reason he can’t hang up is because he’ll just stare up at the ceiling and beg for it to fall down on him. He doesn’t know what Blaine would do if he did. He doesn’t know if Blaine can actually help.

Kurt feels just - guilty.

He’s holding Blaine back.

He can’t do it to him anymore. He is grey, Blaine is colour. He can’t make him fade too.

“I depend on you too much,” he says one night, airy and quiet, not really wanting to say it. But he says it because it’s the truth, and he needs to own up to it.

Blaine laughs. “What?” he squawks over the phone. “Never, Kurt.”

“But I do.” He takes a shaky breath in and holds it, shuts his eyes. “It’s not fair.”

“What’s not fair is that you need me and I can’t physically be there to help. What’s wrong?”

Everything.

He keeps his eyes closed and tries to think of what’s _not_ wrong. “Nothing, I’m just tired,” he lies, and feels like crying because Blaine’s the last person he would ever lie to. “We move this weekend. You’re coming to help, right?”

“You know it.”

Kurt manages a smile, presses his face into the phone and just wants to feel Blaine again. “Then I have something to look forward to.”

But in a way, he knows he doesn’t, because Blaine will just have to leave.

-

He can’t lie to Blaine, he can’t pretend he’s fine when he’s not.

But then Blaine is there in his driveway for the first time in forever and Kurt forgets about every single bad thing and focuses on every single good thing instead; Blaine. And even though he’s leaving this place where his entire life was built, he doesn’t feel as sad as he should.

If he can just - hold onto this, he should be alright. Blaine’s touch doesn’t fade, it never has, he just has to remember it’s still there.

Blaine carries all the heavy boxes for Kurt, even though Kurt is more than capable of doing it himself, and Blaine makes jokes when he knows Kurt needs it and Blaine stays quiet when he knows Kurt needs silence more.

Blaine’s always been with him, just like he said.

When he leaves again, Kurt doesn’t cry, because he’s not really leaving.

-

Or that’s what Kurt thought.

The school year deepens, the leaves turn orange, the air gets cold, and Blaine grows more distant.

At first it’s not choice, it can’t be choice, Blaine would never choose this (would he?).

One night he can’t call Kurt because he has an earlier practice than usual. Then that one night turns into almost every night.

Schoolwork gets harder, for Kurt too, and he really needs it as a distraction so he has to focus. Somewhere in all the focusing, the texts dwindle down as well.

Messages of  _how are you?_  and _i miss you_  and _Rachel is insane, please end me_  turn into silence, into single word replies and _sorry for the late response._

They try. Kurt knows Blaine cares so they damn well try but - it’s hard.

And Kurt has to let it happen, because he knows he depends on Blaine for too much, and he can’t hold him back. He still has Blaine. He still has him. Fourteen years of being best friends can’t fade because of their lack of texts.

What sucks is that he knows, statistically speaking, that he’s spending more time with Karofsky than he spends with Blaine. Every day in the halls, he feels his eyes, he feels his hands even when they’re not on him, and he wonders why he gets under his skin so bad when _everybody_ here hates Kurt.

There’s just something about him, hooking into Kurt and peeling him back. Something so animalistic and evil about the way he attacks him.

It all started when he kicked Kurt’s book across the room all those years ago.

Kurt doesn’t think it’ll actually ever end.

He wonders what it is about him that Karofsky hates so much.

One day he almost finds out.

Karofsky shoves him, and Kurt goes, because he has no reason not to. His books crash to the ground, his phone goes flying, spinning itself like a hockey puck around the floor until Karofsky stops it with his big, disgusting shoe. He picks it up. He looks at the screen. He scoffs.

“Still not over that little Anderson?” Karofsky sneers, looking down at where Kurt’s still on the ground, then back to the phone, where Kurt’s lockscreen is a picture of him and Blaine. “Don’t you know that little fairy can’t save you now?”

He tosses the phone back to Kurt and strolls away, shoulders held back broadly, as if to seem bigger, scarier, stronger.

And Kurt wonders if Karofsky actually hates him, or if he just hates how Kurt feels for Blaine.

-

One entire week goes by without hearing Blaine’s voice. Kurt almost doesn’t realize, because there’s too much noise in his life right now. There’s the constant screaming in his head, there’s glee club practice, there’s this wedding that he now has to plan for his dad and Carole and there’s Karofsky’s voice always repeating in his mind. Blaine’s voice has become a low hum in the background for Kurt, something to focus on when he’s trying to sleep.

It shocks him when his phone rings and Blaine’s name comes up.

He puts aside his wedding board, dusts his hands of the glitter that’s somehow spread everywhere, and presses the answer button.

“Blaine?” He’s never had to sound so surprised when answering Blaine, but it’s been a week.

“Hi,” Blaine says, and every ounce of hurt melts away from Kurt’s system. “Tryouts were this week, sorry for not calling sooner.”

“It’s -” It’d be bitchy to say it isn’t okay, a best friend wouldn’t do that, and Kurt hasn’t really even noticed anyways. “It’s okay. Did you make the team?”

“I did,” Blaine says, sounding relieved, sounding more tired than Kurt’s ever heard him. “How are you? How’s wedding planning?”

That one question launches Kurt off into a spiel, word after word and Blaine responds in a way only Blaine would respond and before Kurt even knows it, an hour has gone by of just talking and talking and how, how have they not run out of things to say when it’s been fourteen years?

Blaine helps him choose between shades of orange and red for the flowers, Kurt helps Blaine narrow down his options of songs to sing for his solo audition, and they just can’t stop.

Until some time later, when Kurt’s got the phone on speaker and his hands are sore from cutting fabric samples and his eyes are tired from having them constantly open but he doesn’t want to hang up. That's when Blaine goes quiet, and not in a way that says he wants to hang up.

In a way that says he has something scary to say, and he doesn’t want to say it.

Kurt already prepares for the worst. But what could be as bad as his best friend moving away?

“What is it?” he asks, coldly, picking up the phone again to press to his ear instead.

Blaine laughs, baffled, and asks, “What is what?”

“Whatever it is you’re about to tell me.”

“I don’t have anything to -”

“Blaine.”

Blaine goes even quieter, and Kurt tries to imagine where he is and what he’s doing. He’s no longer across the street, he’s in another world, in his dorm, in a school that’s now his home. Might as well be a lifetime away with how silent he is.

“It’s just . . we’ve never talked about this before, I don’t know how to - it’s weird.”

Kurt’s stomach twists up. He suddenly doesn’t feel tired. “Well isn’t that why we’re best friends? We can say anything to each other?”

“Yeah,” Blaine breathes, and goes quiet again, and Kurt can almost see his face, pained and scared and anxious. “Okay . . . well, there’s this boy.”

For some reason he can’t explain, Kurt wasn’t ever expecting that, whatever that is. Shock and - hurt ball up in his throat, make it impossible to breathe, to say anything.

Blaine’s waiting for a response, so he has to choke out, “O-oh. A boy.”

“He’s on the lacrosse team, and he’s thinking of joining the Warblers.”

Kurt wants to take a few hundred steps back and know when exactly this boy came into Blaine’s life and who he is and what he looks like and why he’s there in the first place.

Blaine just keeps talking. “I don’t really know what I feel,” he sighs, and sounds genuinely - _pained_. “He just - keeps flirting with me, and texting me, and I think I like it.”

Kurt could throw up. He realizes he’s holding the phone too tightly, hasn’t properly exhaled in minutes. He lets it out all at once and nearly cries. “Oh.”

Be supportive, be supportive, he is your best friend now act like it.

“I’m sorry for not telling you sooner. I’ve just been - trying to make it make sense and figure out what to do.”

“What’s his name?”

“Sebastian.” Blaine says it so easily, and Kurt can hear the smile now in his voice.

He seriously wants to throw up.

“What’s stopping you?” he asks, cold again, dark again, more venomous and mean than he intended. “It sounds like you like him, and he likes you.”

Blaine falters, lets out an uneasy laugh. “Uh, well, I’m not sure. I guess . . . he’s just not who I thought I’d end up with.”

They go quiet.

The bad quiet.

The _nothing to say anymore_ quiet.

Kurt has no idea why he’s acting like this, why this hurts like being stabbed. He’s spent the past few months terrified because of another boy, and all this time Blaine’s been falling in love with another.

“Hm.” He looks at his nails, tries to distance himself, tries to not break down and tries to not get mad. “Is he cute?”

He sounds so fake, voice so high and airy and not like his at all.

Blaine doesn’t seem to notice, voice gaining speed and momentum and joy. “In a devastatingly handsome sort of way.”

“Then I really don’t see the problem here. Go for it. I don’t know why you’re even asking me.” He remembers he’s Blaine’s best friend, and a best friend would be supportive, not cold and distant and mean. “. . . you sound . . really happy.”

He hears Blaine’s breath, wishes he could feel it again.

He doesn’t dare think about the reality of this. The harsh reality that tells him Blaine will never be that close again.

“Okay,” Blaine says, voice tight and clipped, sounding for some reason . . disappointed. “You’re right.”

“Of course I am,” Kurt says and smiles. “Now before you go, I have one more question about fabric.”

Another pause, another breath, and Kurt can’t tell if it’s one of relief or sadness.

“I’m all ears.”

-

Life goes on. It has to go on.

He plans the wedding and he’s afraid to invite Blaine because if Blaine brings “Sebastian” then Kurt will die.

Life goes on.

He doesn’t get a solo or a duet or even a significant line in their setlist for Sectionals.

Life goes on.

He barely even notices Karofsky anymore, even when the touches and shoves and pushes and lingering glances happen more frequently.

Life goes on and he hears from Blaine less and less, which he supposes is how life is _supposed_ to go on.

Sebastian.

He knows it’s bad and not something a good friend would do, but every day he doesn’t get a text from Blaine, every week that goes by without a call, Kurt’s mind pictures overly detailed scenarios of what Blaine is doing instead, and it all revolves around “Sebastian”.

Kurt hates him, and he doesn’t even know him.

They make a plan for Friday night. Blaine made the plan, actually, which made Kurt feel a bit better. They can stay up all night talking, just them, because nobody else can come between a phone call.

He calls at the decided time. Blaine doesn’t answer.

He gives it a few more minutes, about to call again, when Blaine calls him instead.

“Kurt, I’m so sorry.” There’s panic in his voice and Kurt knows what’s coming.

“Let me guess,” he says dryly, clutching the phone so tightly he’s afraid it’ll snap. “Sebastian?”

“We’re going to catch a movie with a few of the other guys who stayed here for the weekend.”

Kurt’s heart can’t really fall any further, so he just nods, and says, “Okay.” and doesn’t cry.

He just had no idea it was possible to lose something that was promised.

Blaine promised he’d be there, and he isn’t.

Kurt supposes this is just life going on for everyone else. Kurt supposes this is just his death sentence.

The days without Blaine are hard. The days with Karofsky are even harder. Kurt has the bruises to prove it. The one person who ever cared and noticed isn’t around to see, so Kurt accepts it. He can’t depend on Blaine anymore.

That’s the hardest part to come to terms with.

He’s losing his best friend.

His biggest fear come true.

The whole world can hate him, Karofsky and every evil like him can take him apart piece by piece, but Kurt can’t really care, because he’s already lost the biggest part of him.

-

“I feel like I haven’t talked to you in forever,” Blaine says, through the phone, because if they do talk it’s only ever through the phone.

Kurt sits at his vanity, halfway through his nighttime skincare routine. Blaine had texted _Can I call you?_ and Kurt figured it wouldn’t be a waste of his time, so he said yes.

He looks at his reflection and says coldly, “You haven’t.”

“Kurt, I wish you could see my schedule. I need two of me to do everything,” Blaine continues, either ignoring the hardness to Kurt’s voice or being completely oblivious. “It’s crazy.”

He puts the phone on speaker and continues with his routine, applying toner to a cotton ball and swiping it down the bridge of his nose. “Sounds rough.”

“Insanely.”

He doesn’t ask, he doesn’t say -

So you have time for him? So there really is something else in this world that you value more than what we have?

What do we even have?

Is it over?

“Well, thank you for carving out precious minutes from your schedule for me tonight,” Kurt drawls, and has to blink, because he’s close to crying because this isn’t fair. “May I ask what prompted this?”

Blaine goes quiet before loudly going _uhh._ “Because I wanted to talk to my best friend?”

Kurt twists the cap back on the toner, tosses the cotton ball into the trash can. “Hm.”

There’s so much he could talk about, so much he could say. Blaine was the one person who actually listened and actually cared. Kurt isn’t sure if he’s still that person.

Blaine is busy, Blaine has a life, Blaine has a “Sebastian” and Kurt has - nothing. He won’t drag Blaine down. He’s been a leach on his life since they were two years old. He refuses.

And besides, Blaine probably doesn’t actually care anymore.

He’s been dreaming of a phone call, a piece of time, anything really, to try and go back to what they were and how right they felt and how the whole world was put to ease whenever Blaine spoke. Now the line is quiet, and Kurt isn’t sure how to make it not be.

“How’s Sebastian?” he asks, and he hates himself, but he’s petty and he’s hurt and he knows that’s the real reason they haven’t spoken like this in ages.

“He’s . . he’s good?” Blaine says questioningly, not seeming sure. “I don’t want to talk about him if it makes you -”

“If it makes me what?”

“He’s good, Kurt, we’re good.” Blaine sounds like a stranger. Kurt knows that conversation is over when Blaine adds nothing else on, and he can feel the sharp edges to his words. “How’s - how’s school?”

Fine. Maybe he _doesn’t_ want to talk about it.

“The same as always,” Kurt huffs, reaching for his undereye moisturizer. “Glee club would be perfect if I was actually heard, class would be bearable if I could actually concentrate, and the halls would be less scary if a rabid bear wasn't so intent on painting my body with bruises.”

The line is still quiet.

“I’m sorry, Kurt,” Blaine says, and Kurt waits for more, waits for help, waits for support.

The line stays quiet.

“It’s fine,” he snaps, and feels his lungs ache from the lack of relief, feels his heart hurt because he was expecting it.

“I wish I was there.”

“But you aren’t.”

He can practically hear Blaine thinking, but he doesn’t know what.

“. . . I feel like talking over the phone about this isn’t going to do much,” Blaine eventually says, and Kurt could laugh. “I don’t have practice next Friday. Can I see you?”

Before, a day ago, a week ago, Kurt would have lit up and said yes and would have looked forward to it every second of every day.

Now he thinks twice about it.

“How convenient,” he says dryly, and has to shut his eyes, can’t look at himself anymore. “Pencil me in. I’ll try not to be disappointed when something else inevitably comes up.”

“Kurt -”

“I’ll see you then, Blaine.”

His hand flies out to press the end call button, and then all he can do is sit there hunched over, trying hard to breathe, trying hard to stop feeling this way.

Whatever this way is.

All he knows is that it hurts in a way that Blaine has never hurt him before.

It hurts more than anything physical ever could.

-

He can’t control his stupid heart, which is stupidly excited.

Seeing and feeling Blaine was always the cure, always made the rain and blue go away.

He can’t sit still in glee club, and Mercedes notices, smiling knowingly as she tugs on his arm and asks, “What’s got you so happy?”

Nothing really makes him happy anymore, so he’s not lying when he replies, “Nothing, nothing.”

Blaine just makes it - better.

Or at least, he’s hoping he still does. The stubborn, petty part of Kurt wants to go up to him and say goodbye and never let him in again, but that’s just the hurt talking.

The even more stubborn, and loving, part of Kurt can’t let go. When you spend fourteen years building something with one specific person, you can’t throw that away.

Right?

He just doesn’t know for sure.

It’s different now. He knows that.

The promise broke. Blaine broke it.

It’s different now.

He had to beg his dad to let him go, because now that the wedding is coming up, family bonding has suddenly shot up high on the importance chart, and Friday night dinners are more important than they’ve ever been. But it’s Blaine, and his dad eventually gets it.

They agreed to meet at the Lima Bean because it’s close enough for both of them.

(Kurt really only agreed because it’s not a place they have many memories in)

He goes home straight after school to shower and change and do his hair and his dad asks why he’s getting all dressed up, and Finn teases him in that sing-song way you do when you’re teasing someone about a crush.

But they have no idea.

It’s different now.

The first thing he does when he gets there is run to the restroom to check over his appearance vigorously, as if he hadn’t spent two hours in front of the mirror at home. Then he takes a few calming breathes, locks up his bones and sharpens his glance and readies himself for whatever is to come.

This is what he usually does before starting a day at school.

He’s too early he realizes, which was his intention, but now he’s alone in a busy coffee shop with nothing but his buzzing, anxious thoughts. He orders his coffee and takes a seat behind a pillar, can’t even taste anything, too nervous. He sits, and breathes, and feels the warmth from his cup and tries to focus on that.

It’s different now.

He really doesn’t want it to be different.

He’s so wrapped up in what he’s going to say and what he’s going to do that he doesn’t even notice somebody coming right up to his table, not until they’re loudly clearing their throat, forcing Kurt to look up.

“I’m going to take a wild guess,” the boy says, and smirks. “And say that you must be Kurt Hummel.”

He doesn’t know him.

But he’s tall, and sharp, and . . . devastatingly, stupidly, unfairly _handsome_.

“And you must be Sebastian.”

He hadn’t even thought about this, didn’t prepare for what he would do. Meeting Blaine’s . . . boyfriend, his “Sebastian”, isn’t something he thought he’d have to do. Seeing him is -

Kurt feels his insides flare, feels something sharp wedge between his ribs, something that makes every breath uncomfortable.

But he can’t place it.

Sebastian is not what Kurt had pictured, because Kurt hadn’t really pictured him. He looks up at his eyes and his lips and thinks - no, don’t think it.

It’s not your place to think it.

Don’t think it.

Don’t -

Sebastian sticks his hand out, and Kurt hesitates. He has to be careful about who touches him now, how he touches back. He takes it, they shake, and Sebastian grips Kurt’s hand so hard it’s like he’s trying to obliterate his skin, make him nothing but dust.

Kurt shakes back harder.

“I’ll be fair and admit to cheating,” Sebastian says as he slides out the chair opposite Kurt, sitting down. “Blaine’s shown me your picture about two million times already.”

Blaine’s name leaving his lips sounds wrong. The hairs on the back of Kurt’s neck rise. He feels like a cat sensing a ghost.

“I wasn’t aware you’d be joining us,” Kurt says dryly, taking a sip from his drink.

“I’m not. I was studying over in the corner when you walked in, and I couldn’t help but notice the nauseating scent of all that hairspray. How many cans do you go through per day?”

Kurt breathes in deep, swears he feels his claws trying to burst free. He wasn’t sure what to expect from Sebastian, but somehow, this is it.

But no.

He’s Blaine’s - boyfriend. He has to be civil, he has to be nice, or as nice as he can be.

“Funny you mention that, I was just about to ask what brand it is you use.”

The words roll right off Sebastian. He looks entirely relieved and pleased with himself, sitting back in his chair like this is his territory and Kurt came over to him. “I was hoping we’d run into each other one day.”

“Oh?”

“Of course. Blaine talks about you non-stop,” Sebastian says, and then his smirk switches into something even more sinister, more wicked. “A little too non-stop if you ask me.”

“How odd.” Kurt narrows his eyes, squeezes his fingers around his cup, holds Sebastian’s gaze. “He hardly mentions you at all.”

That gets him, Kurt thinks, because for one brief second the smirk is gone.

Then it comes back, and Sebastian laughs, ignoring him. “It was like trying to break a horse,” he says, and sighs dramatically, giving his head a shake. “He just went on and on about _Kurt this_ and _Kurt that._ ”

Kurt sits there uncomfortable, because this is leading somewhere, he can hear it in Sebastian’s voice.

“It took a little coaxing, but I like to think I guided him out of it.”

Pretenses are gone, but he has to be careful, because words can touch too and Kurt’s afraid of whatever’s to come. He sits up straight, doesn’t move any other muscle. “Where is this going?”

Sebastian’s grin comes back, sharp as thorns on a rose but nowhere near as pretty.

“Wow, you really are as dumb as you look.”

And he can’t. He can’t sit here and listen to this when everything he associates with Blaine is good and Sebastian is nothing but _bad._

He slams his cup down, the loud tap reverberating off the table. “I’m not sure where this hostility is coming from, seeing as we just met, but there is no reason for us to be uncivil towards each other.”

Though he really wants to be uncivil.

Sebastian pulls his arm up, the sleeve of his blazer sliding to expose his watch. He looks down at it and hums. “I was hoping you’d be more my speed, but I guess I have a few spare minutes to lay it out for you.”

“Please do.”

Sebastian looks back to Kurt, grin never wavering. “I don’t like you,” he says bluntly, and the fact that he’s still smiling has Kurt’s nerves crawling. “I don’t see the appeal, but that doesn’t matter, because Blaine does.”

Kurt swallows roughly, knows he needs to be tough now, needs to be strong, needs to fight.

But does he?

He’s already lost everything good, he doesn’t deserve everything good, Blaine is everything good.

It just still feels like he’s holding on, so right now it very much feels like Sebastian is tearing everything good away.

He can’t get himself to fight, because it feels like he’s already lost.

“I’m not following.”

Sebastian’s smirk finally drops, and he pinches the bridge of his nose, then looks back at Kurt. “I don’t like sharing what’s mine,” he says, serious now. “And while I don’t plan on keeping him around forever, for the time being, Blaine happens to fall under that category.”

“He’s my best friend,” Kurt chokes out, one hand clenching and unclenching on the tabletop.

That usually fixes everything. If he’s sad he just has to remember Blaine’s his best friend. When he’s lonely all he has to do is remember Blaine’s his best friend. When the world hates him for existing, all he has to do is remember -

But now he knows, growing up makes that word mean less, being apart stops it from being the answer to everything.

Sebastian laughs.

“You go ahead and keep calling it that, Kurt, but everyone who has ears and eyes can see and hear it.”

He still doesn’t understand.

“This isn’t a competition,” Kurt says flatly, hates how wet and weak his voice sounds. “It doesn’t have to be. We both want the same thing, for Blaine to be - happy.”

“But that’s the thing.” Sebastian slowly shakes his head, looking dangerous now. “If you’re around, I don’t think he will be.”

Kurt crushes the coffee cup, feels the paper press and flatten underneath his palm. He knows there are tears in his eyes, they sting like needles, but he can’t blink.

At Kurt’s silence, Sebastian continues; “Because you can’t give him what he needs.” He smirks again, shrugs one shoulder. “I can.”

Left motionless, silent, Kurt sits with his unshed tears and Sebastian’s words pressing down on him.

He wants to ask _what can’t I give him?_

What do you have that I don’t?

Sebastian is hideous and awful and conniving and wrong, and Blaine is everything but.

You don’t deserve him -

“It’s sweet that you grew up as best buddies, really, I’m touched,” Sebastian says, putting one hand over his heart, smile flickering into something almost soft. “But you’re not kids anymore. So while you may know what he sounds like when he’s crying over a scraped knee or a bad dream, I know what he sounds like when he’s moaning around my -”

“Sebastian?”

They both bolt upright, Kurt whipping his head up and Sebastian whipping his body around to see Blaine, standing just a few feet away, looking confused and lost as he unwinds his scarf from around his neck. “What are you doing here?”

Kurt feels like he’s just had every dark part of his heart dragged out and kicked at.

Sebastian just smiles easily and laughs. “I was getting some studying done before our big night tomorrow,” he says, tugging on Blaine’s sleeve when he steps a bit closer. Then his eyes switch to Kurt, and Kurt can see the disgust. “And I just happened to run into your friend Kurt.”

Blaine looks to Kurt, almost expectantly, like he’s looking for confirmation.

Kurt shrugs both shoulders and says as brightly as he can, “I like to be early.”

“So does Blaine,” Sebastian says, and pats the small of Blaine’s back. “But that’s something we’re working on.”

Blaine goes red.

Kurt looks away.

“Anyways, I should give you two some alone time.” Sebastian stands, leans into Blaine’s space and whispers something, and that stupid smirk never leaves his stupid face. Blaine laughs, whispers something back, and Kurt has no choice but to sit and watch.

Then Sebastian turns and waves at Kurt, and there’s language in his eyes, and unfortunately Kurt understands every word. “It was nice meeting you, Kurt.”

While Blaine and Sebastian say goodbye to each other, Kurt wipes away the one single tear that had the gall to escape.

No more of that.

He still can’t breathe when Sebastian leaves, never been so rattled by another person’s presence before. Blaine sits down and sighs, shucking off his jacket as he says, “I’m sorry, I didn’t want you two to meet like that.”

Blaine’s voice usually warms the coldest parts of him, but he still feels frozen.

“It’s fine,” Kurt says on his exhale, and gives Blaine a smile. “He’s charming.”

Blaine crooks an eyebrow. “That’s one word for him.”

Kurt has to actually smile then, because the quirk to Blaine’s brow and the way his lips look when he smiles is almost enough to make Kurt forget everything that just happened.

And oh.

That’s Blaine.

That’s his best friend.

It’s been weeks, but he still looks the same, or almost the same, and Kurt could cry from relief because maybe then things aren’t that different now.

But then his eyes land back on Blaine’s lips, and Sebastian’s voice starts to replay itself.

Maybe not.

“Hi,” Blaine says, breathless, and he leans onto the table and smiles at Kurt. “The word ‘miss’ seems like an understatement right now.”

Kurt forces his smile brighter. He doesn’t say _you have no idea how hard it’s been without you_ or _I miss you so bad it hurts but I can’t anymore._ He just says, “I know.”

Blaine seems to lose himself looking at Kurt, taking a few moments to just stare, but then he snaps out of it and stands again. “I’m going to get a coffee, and then I’ll be right back and I’m all yours. Can I get you a refill?”

_All mine._

He doesn’t even know how different it is.

“That’d be great,” Kurt says, airily.

Blaine smiles and nods, then falters. “What was it again? Your coffee order.”

It feels like being shot, Kurt thinks. He blanks too, and stares at Blaine, hoping he looks as offended and hurt as he feels. “You forgot?”

Blaine looks completely unphased.

“Forget it,” Kurt snaps, and looks down at his cup. “I’m fine.”

Once Blaine leaves he makes a plan, because he needs one.

They’re just friends.

The ‘best’ has been dropped.

It has to be dropped.

Because he can’t give Blaine what he ‘needs’ and Blaine can’t do the same for him.

Because if they were best friends then that promise would have stuck and they wouldn’t have to miss each other so much.

He knows everything happens for a reason, because Blaine made him believe that.

He knows the reason for this now.

He was just meant to be alone, clearly.

Not Blaine. Blaine’s too good for that.

Minutes pass until Blaine comes back, setting two cups on the table and sliding one closer to Kurt. Kurt looks up, surprised, and wraps a hand around it. “I thought you forgot.”

Blaine smiles as he sits down. “Never, Kurt.”

Kurt’s stomach does a weird flip. “Thank you.”

Blaine takes the lid off his cup, starts to pour sugar into his coffee as he says, “I’m not even sure where to start.”

“Anywhere,” Kurt says, because he honestly isn’t sure where they left off.

Bliss crosses Blaine’s face as he smiles and sighs. “There’s just so much.”

Kurt squeezes his too-hot cup. “Good for you, I’m glad.”

Blaine seems to notice the coldness to Kurt’s words because he pauses and tilts his head to the side. “Are you alright?”

Kurt barks out his laugh. “I’m fantastic. Less fantastic than you, but still moderately fantastic.”

Blaine nods and smiles, gives his coffee a stir. “Moderately fantastic is better than miserable,” he says. “What’s new in your life? How’s glee club?”

And Kurt can’t not do it.

He’s hurt.

He _is_ miserable.

“You would know if you called me every once in awhile.”

It comes out like oxygen, and Kurt feels his throat and tongue freeze over once the words are out. The second he says it, the faux perfect-great-amazing air around them snaps.

Blaine looks up and says like he’s begging, “Kurt.”

He can’t be cruel to Blaine, not a bone in his body was designed for it. “I’m sorry,” he chokes out, and has to tip his head back, has to blink away tears. “It’s been a rough few weeks.”

Blaine’s hand over his surprises him. Physical contact. It’s been a long, long time.

It feels unfamiliar.

“I’m here now,” Blaine says, squeezing Kurt’s hand. “Can that be enough?”

It can’t be, because _now_ isn’t every weekend after like you promised.

“I’m sorry,” he says again, and doesn’t look at him.

“I really -” Blaine’s hand falters over Kurt’s, and he sounds like he’s desperate, breathing funny for a moment. “I really miss you, I need you to know that, but it’s just - a lot harder than I thought it would be.”

“I know.” He doesn’t really know, not on Blaine’s side.

Blaine can hear his lie, because he takes his hand away and says, “You don’t believe me, do you?”

He can’t lie to Blaine, he can’t be cruel. He crosses his arms over his chest and says with his chest constricting tight and his voice on the verge of breaking, “I was under the impression that when someone is important to you, you make every effort possible -”

“I was under the impression that you understood how busy I am, Dalton is a lot -”

“A lot harder than McKinley, I know,” Kurt snaps, and turns to look away.

They fall silent. Bad silent. Kurt can’t even breathe.

Eventually Blaine reaches out for him again, and says shakily, “I don’t want to fight with you, not when I finally, finally have a chance to spend actual time with you.”

But Kurt’s still hurt and bitter and Blaine’s hand is over his but he can still feel Sebastian’s.

“And not Sebastian.”

Blaine pulls away and rubs at his eyes, groans, “I can have two important people, Kurt, he’s not -”

“Try telling that to him.”

Blaine pauses, frowns, looks between his fingers and says, “What?”

“Nothing, nothing.” He takes a breath, settles himself, and offers Blaine the brightest of smiles. “You’re right, let’s not waste our time together. Let’s just - talk.”

But there’s nothing to say.

It’s like sitting down with a stranger.

No, not even that.

Sitting down with someone you knew so well, and felt connected to, only to learn you’re as unconnected as unconnected can be, and that you don’t know them anymore.

Kurt doesn’t have much in his life to brag about, and the things he hurts from he can’t mention, because Blaine can’t help him, not really.

He doesn’t like hearing about the events in Blaine’s life, because there are many, and he isn’t a part of them anymore.

After they circle through the same round of questions and answers, Blaine finally says, “How . . how bad is it now, with everything? I wish I could be there, you know how much I - I hate him.”

He knows exactly what he’s talking about. “Does it matter?” he asks, shrugging one shoulder. “You’re not there. I’ll just have to - deal with it.”

“But -” Blaine tilts his head and stares at Kurt. “You don’t usually let it get to you. I can tell it’s getting to you.”

Kurt brings his coffee cup up to his lips, though the contents have gone cold long ago. “My only way of coping doesn’t work anymore.”

It’s not there anymore.

Blaine shakes his head and looks angry for one quick second. “I’m scared for you, Kurt,” he says and Kurt feels like a child again and he can’t, because he remembers those words, he remembers that pain. “You need to tell someone, anyone.”

Kurt presses his lips together, mentally screams and shouts and begs his eyes to not produce tears because he’s not sad, not really.

Just entirely.

“There’s no one to listen,” he says simply, and shrugs again.

“It’s not right.”

“It is to them.”

“Well it isn’t to me,” Blaine says, demanding, and puts both hands over Kurt’s, inching his chair closer. “I’m here.”

But you aren’t.

You can’t be.

He feels Blaine’s hands over his and knows, despite how bad he wants to believe it, it’s not forever. Blaine promised with those hands and a few words but it broke, so Kurt can’t trust him, can’t cope with him anymore.

Blaine’s hands have to hold onto other things now, other people.

Kurt has to accept that, too.

“Thank you,” he says, not sure what he’s thankful for. “I appreciate it.”

It just won’t solve anything.

That’s okay.

Kurt thinks with Blaine’s hands over his, that this is loss, this is losing, this is not getting a choice in choosing what means what anymore. He wants to curve his fingers around Blaine’s and hold on as tight as he can. But Sebastian is right.

They aren’t kids anymore. They are friends. They cannot depend on each other for everything, because there’s too much space between them now to do just that.

So he pulls his hands back, and he accepts it.

-

It’s dark out, the parking lot nearly vacant, the air cold and bitter and yet somehow soothing against his skin. Inside was too warm, too hot, too crowded and too much.

Outside he can breathe.

Until Blaine grabs him, tries to hold him, tries to be bigger than Kurt by wrapping his arms around him tightly and pulling him down the slightest bit. Then he can’t breathe, but being this close, he almost doesn’t mind.

Except it’s just so unfamiliar. It’s like loving the night sky, but having the galaxy shift every star sideways. No matter how beautiful it is, how breathtaking, he can’t get used to it, because it’s not what it was.

“I know things are different now,” Blaine whispers close to Kurt’s ear, the loudest sound in the universe. “But what you mean to me hasn’t changed.”

He almost cries.

Can’t Blaine feel it? Can’t he see? The stars are all different, they aren’t what they need to be. It’s all changed, and unless the universe shifts again it will never go back.

This is how it was meant to go, because everything happens for a reason.

So he doesn’t cry, and he pats Blaine’s back and says, “Okay.”

Blaine pulls back, and there’s soft sincerity in his eyes and Kurt’s knees wobble from it, but he stays strong. “I’ll see you at the wedding.”

Kurt nods, realizes then that he’s clutching at Blaine’s arms too tightly, but he can’t make himself let go. “I’ll be sure to mark you down as plus one.”

For one quick second, the universe goes blank, no stars no direction no right or wrong. Blaine frowns, not comprehending for a moment, until he finally nods.

He doesn’t say anything, just pulls Kurt back into a hug, and pushes the universe back into sickening motion.

Going home, he only feels miserable, and not at all relieved.

He marches through the front door and into the hall, quick to hang up his bag and jacket as his dad yells out from the living room, “Kurt, we saved you a plate!”

He remains wordless and stomps into the kitchen, making as much noise as possible because it’s the only way to get the frustration out without _screaming_. He slams the cutlery drawer closed, takes the plate of cold food and sits at the kitchen island, not eating, just stabbing it with his fork.

He hears his dad come into the kitchen seconds later, but doesn’t look up. “Hey, how’s Blaine?”

It’s said so easily, just simple conversation, but Kurt’s too hurt to respond nicely. “He’s good.”

His plate of food doesn’t even look like food anymore, just mashed up and stabbed to death mush.

“Just good?” his dad asks, leaning over the other side of the island.

“He’s amazing, dad!” Kurt snaps, and drops the fork to wave his hands in the air. “Is that what you wanted to hear?”

“Easy, Kurt, I’m just asking,” his dad says placatingly, eyes sharpening on him. “Usually you’re shinin’ outta your ears when you see him.”

Kurt’s lungs fill up, but they don’t empty. He presses his lips together and waits for the throb of pain to subside.

It doesn’t.

“Things are different now.” He picks up the fork again so he has something to focus on, tapping it against the edge of his plate. “We’re growing up.”

His dad laughs and shakes his head. “Yeah, but that doesn’t mean you have to grow apart.”

“Well tell that to him!” he cries, and knows his eyes are watering, but he’s too tired to hold it in anymore. “He promised he’d visit and call, but he’s always too busy with lacrosse or Warbler practice or - _Sebastian_ , he doesn’t even realize he’s breaking it!”

His dad sighs heavily, and walks around the island and pulls out the stool next to Kurt.

“Kurt, the kid loves you,” he says, says it like a much needed breath. “Maybe he doesn’t realize he broke anything because he hasn’t. So he’s around less? That’s life. Doesn’t mean he cares any less.”

His throat hurts, so he can’t get any words out yet. He turns to look down at his plate, sighs out his breath. “Then why does it feel like it?” he asks, and doesn’t want an answer. “It’s not what it used to be, and he doesn’t even notice.”

“You expected it to stay the same?” his dad asks, one faint eyebrow raising up his forehead. “Listen kiddo, I know you think adults can’t relate to your special little situation, but I’ve been where you are, trust me.”

“I’m sure.”

“You know my buddy Mike?”

“The one that smells like gasoline?”

His dad smirks, nods his head and says, “We were two peas in a pod growing up. We stuck together like glue throughout all of high school, but then graduation snuck up on us, he moved away, and we stopped talking as much, barely ever saw each other.”

“. . . okay? Is this supposed to make me feel better?”

His dad brings one hand up to ruffle up his hair, sighing almost fondly. He looks - touched by something.

“My point is, Kurt, that he’s still a good friend. Sure, I only see the guy every few years, but that doesn’t change how much I care about him, doesn’t take away from any of our memories. If the guy means a lot to you, if you’re really best friends, then time and distance and all that fun stuff won’t take away from it. Real best friends don’t need to be there every second to be there every step of the way.”

He just sits there, breathing, listening, trying hard to accept it.

He thinks he gets it.

It’s just -

Not the same. He can’t explain why.

“So you’re saying . . . to just let it happen?”

“I’m sayin’, you’re still the guy’s world, just don’t expect too much from him, and accept all the changes that come, ‘cause that’s how you stay close.”

He nods, and looks down at his hands. They’re shaking.

“I just wish he never left,” he whispers sadly.

His dad pats his back. “I know, bud, I know.”

His dad leaves him after, but Kurt can’t get up, has to digest the words just said.

Don’t expect too much from him.

Accept it.

Let it happen.

That was already his plan, wasn’t it?

Now he knows, this is just how it’s supposed to go.

-

He wonders, however, if accepting the shift in stars is the same as accepting a threat with hands.

Try as he might, he can’t stop from jolting with fear whenever he sees him, when he senses his presence in the halls, crowded or not. It’s not something he was made to accept, and he figures no human is, no human wants to be hurt.

No human should want to hurt, either.

But that’s just the way it goes, the way it is, the way life flows. Right?

Karofsky moves and hulks up his body when he passes Kurt, like he’s meaning to push him, but he quickly jerks back and snarls instead, like some feral animal.

Kurt’s heart races like scared prey.

That’s what he is.

He wonders if prey ever get tired of being prey. It’s what’s supposed to happen, it’s how the earth spins, it’s just the level you’re born into in the food chain of life, you don’t get a choice.

All he knows, after all that wondering, is that _he’s_ tired of it.

Being lonely and being terrified don’t go well together. He knows now he can’t change one half of that, and he’s ready to live with it, but the other . . .

He just wants to control something, one thing, one single little thing in his whole life, is that so much to ask? Behind him and ahead of him are lines and lines of events all waiting to happen or have happened, and he just wants to control one of them.

One day, on a day like every other day, he walks into that school afraid and small and alone. Karofsky seeks him out like he can smell Kurt’s blood, and he probably can, and when he shoves Kurt hard against the nearest wall Kurt can’t even feel it, because all he can feel are his thoughts.

Do something. Don’t be prey.

He picks himself up off the ground, because Karofsky hasn’t killed him yet so he still has a chance, and he chases after him.

Prey just isn’t meant to chase, he figures, because his heart is beating so fast it’s making blood burn hot in places it shouldn’t. He hears a loud, high-pitched scream, probably his subconscious, begging him to stop. He can’t.

Can’t even control himself, really.

He chases Karofsky.

Karofsky chases back.

Kurt realizes he’s run right into a trap, something elaborate set up and designed for his misery only. The locker room smells, it’s silent, it’s empty, he’s cornered, Karofsky is cornering him.

Just like a predator.

Only not to kill or hurt.

But to own and possess.

Karofsky’s hands come up and grab Kurt’s face and Kurt knows in that split second that it’s a different touch than all his previous ones, can feel it in the way his fingers curve around his jaw, like he’s trying to be _careful._

A trap, Kurt can’t get out, he’s caught and he’s seconds from being hunted he knows it, but he can’t get his mind to work, can’t fight, can’t run. There’s nothing about this he could ever control.

Karofsky kisses him, but it feels like a bite.

And Kurt’s not dead, he doesn’t die, but he wishes it.

The world shuts out in that moment, taking with it every star, every colour, every single good thing, and leaves him with everything bad.

Karofsky’s touch. Karofsky’s lips.

His kiss.

Just like that, every nerve and bone and vein belong to somebody else, no longer Kurt’s.

Karofsky tries to do it again, staggers forward like he’s hungry for more and Kurt’s so afraid and so scared and feels so close to death he shouts something, not sure what, and tries to think through all the screaming in his mind that he should run.

Soon, but not soon enough, the flight instinct kicks in, and like the prey he is, he turns around and runs and runs and runs until he can’t.

It’s never far enough.

He gets to his car and climbs in and slams the door and not even then does he cry. He puts his hands on the wheel, curls his fingers around it, and lets out a few deep, heavy breaths, desperate to cry, desperate to get this feeling out.

He can’t. It sticks.

Go.

Go somewhere.

Anywhere.

Leave.

But -

There’s nowhere to go.

Because this is how it was supposed to go.

He cries then, bows his head down and breaks, hates that the only sound he can hear now is his own sobbing, echoing and loud in the small space of his car. And he wants to think he’s never, ever felt so alone, but he’s not alone.

Oh god, far from it.

He can feel his hands everywhere, like they’re still there, and he can taste the way he tastes on his lips, and he can feel the brutal erasure of his own first kiss.

He cries. He can’t stop.

There’s no reason to.

Nowhere to go and nothing to do, he sits there until he can breathe almost normally again.

Then there’s nothing left to do but breathe.

And breathe.

And breathe.

This is life.

He has no choice but to breathe like this now.

-

He just keeps living, because this is how living is supposed to go.

Nothing changes, not really. Kurt likes routine, so he sticks with it.

He wakes up and stares at his breakfast until it’s time to go to school. He goes to school and stares at his binder until it’s time for his next class. He walks through the halls and stares at his feet until he gets there. He goes to glee club and stares at the whiteboard until it’s time to go home. He drives home and stares at the road.

Then he’s home, and he does it all over again.

He thinks at some point he sleeps, but he can’t really tell if it’s sleeping or staring blankly at the ceiling until the sun rises. He doesn’t know.

The one thing that really changes, the one thing he can physically feel, is how often and long he showers. He’s aware of doing it, because he’s always aware of always feeling dirty. He goes through his shower routine twice but never feels clean enough. His hair is suffering the consequences, washing it too much, his fingers are going to be permanently pruned, but he can’t stop. The water is never hot enough, the scents of all his fancy gels and soaps can’t overpower his.

Nothing can wash this away.

Oh, but he tries.

Some nights, when he’s sure nobody else is awake, when the street outside is dead quiet, he lets himself think about it, and he lets himself be not-fine.

He thinks of the reason for this, why this happened.

He can only come up with one answer; he deserves this.

Thank god nobody else is awake, thank god the streets are blank.

Nobody can hear him cry, which is good, because he isn’t supposed to.

The next day starts and he doesn’t even bother filling a bowl up with cereal, just goes straight for the coffee, takes a few sips before dumping the rest down the drain, and then he goes to school.

Food isn’t a good idea, not just because he’s never hungry, but because when Karofsky passes him his stomach tightens and knots itself up. He feels sick from a single glance. He has to lean against a wall, turn his head down and close his eyes and look like an absolute idiot trying to breathe in front of everyone.

Not a soul notices.

Except for Mr. Schue, who approaches Kurt without warning, shocking him upright by putting his hand on his back. He doesn’t seem to register Kurt’s frantic, increased breathing, the panic in his eyes. “Are you alright, Kurt? Do you need to see the nurse?”

A nurse can’t fix this sickness. All the doctors in the world can’t take it away.

He nods, exhales heavily and nods again. “I’m fine.”

He has to be fine because this is fine because this was supposed to happen because he deserves this.

He should be happy.

He always wondered what it would be like to be kissed. When he and - Blaine would play with their toys and make them get married and when he would watch movies with Blaine where princes kissed princesses and where true love solved everything -

He wondered what it would feel like to have another boy’s lips against his. What it would feel like to have strong hands, warm skin and soft lips touching him. For it to not be a shock, not a surprise, but an overwhelming feeling of _yes good right._

That’s what it looks like in the movies. That’s what he’s pictured every time he pictured -

But that’s just a dream, a crazy one he will never get to live, because this is what’s happened, and this is what he gets. He should be happy. Nobody else has ever wanted to kiss him, and he figures nobody else ever will. He should be thankful.

So that’s why he says he’s fine, because he is fine, because this is a good thing.

Even though it hurts so bad it feels like his stomach is full of blood.

Of course, nothing good in his life lasts, because once he accepts it as much as he can as _good_ , Karofsky finds him and makes him wish he never thought that. Karofsky hulks over him like a bear and whispers and promises _I’ll kill you_ and Kurt entirely believes him, because right now there’s nobody else to believe.

Funny.

The only boy who’s ever wanted to be that close to him, the only person who really actually notices him -

Wants him dead.

He can’t pretend to be fine with that anymore, he can’t, but he has to. This is how it’s supposed to go, and nothing can fix it, no doctor or psychiatrist or scientist or surgeon.

Blaine texts him _hope your week is going good! want to meet up for coffee again?_

He thinks of his reply even though he already knows his reply, and sends it hours later. _I’m busy this weekend, unfortunately._

Blaine responds right away. _:( everything alright?_

Kurt reads it over and over and over. He says nothing in reply.

Not even Blaine can fix this. Blaine has to live his life and Kurt has to live his and right now they don’t mix, and they might never again. It’s like his dad said. They just have to let it go the way it’s going, and know and hope that it’s enough. He can’t depend on Blaine anymore, not like that, because he shouldn’t have to to know that Blaine’s his best friend.

He’s still stuck with the nightmares of a child and Blaine’s growing up. Kurt can’t bring him down. Kurt can’t expect him to be there.

And all these days blur together, even though it’s been what, a week? Less than that? It feels like eternity but it feels like a second.

He’s not sure, because every time he shuts his eyes, he’s back in that moment, so does it really matter?

His dad’s making breakfast when he comes downstairs one morning, throwing off his routine, and Kurt panics, but keeps calm as he enters the kitchen and goes straight for the coffee.

“Good morning, kiddo,” his dad says cheerfully from the stove, pushing something around in a pan. “Just in time for breakfast.”

“I’m good,” he says coolly, and takes a sip of too-hot coffee.

His dad pauses and stares at him, spatula held tightly in one hand. “You’re so skinny now, Kurt, you could be one of those models in your magazine. You should eat.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“Well at least let me give you some money for lunch.”

Just as calm as he entered the kitchen, he sets his mug down on the counter, levels his eyes with his dad and says, “The day I eat food cooked in the bowels of McKinley high is the day I die. No thank you.”

“Okay, okay, more for Finn,” his dad sighs, and turns to the stove again. “You alright?”

He groans, “I’m fine, I’ve always been fine, I will always be fine, so please alert the media that they can stop asking that question!” He pulls open a cupboard door and grabs a box of granola bars, takes one out and waves it at his dad’s head and says, “I’ll take one of these just in case. Are you happy?”

His dad glares at the granola bar, but ultimately sighs and nods. “And if that doesn’t do the trick, just mooch off Finn. Guy packs enough food to feed an army.”

He throws the bar in his bag, doesn’t dare tell his dad that he can’t even stomach the idea of eating it.

-

He stays at school until it is physically impossible for him to breathe. It’s like sitting at the bottom of the ocean for as long as you can, sharks and sea creatures all around you, until you just can’t anymore.

He goes home early.

He goes home early the next day.

He unplugs the home phone so the school can’t call and leave an automated message saying he skipped class.

School is a system with one purpose; his slaughter. As long as Karofsky is there, then he will always be prey, he is a target, his blood’s been tasted and he knows the natural conclusion to this stage in evolution.

He dies.

So he doesn’t go to school, and nobody notices.

Until Finn decides to use his eyes for once, and he speaks up at dinner and asks dumbfoundedly, stupid, “Hey, Kurt, why weren’t you at glee this week?”

Kurt goes stark white, can see it in the reflection of his unused fork. “I wasn’t feeling well,” he says weakly, and it’s not a lie. “May I be excused? I have homework.”

His dad shakes his head, says with his mouthful, “You barely touched your plate.”

He’s not sure why his heart is still racing, why he feels so exposed, because nobody notices, nobody even knows.

“Fine.”

He picks at his plate, and he swallows some of it down, and he pretends to be fine so hard he could cry, but there’s no point, because nobody would even ask why.

He’s pretty sure he’s dying.

He’s pretty sure this is what Karofsky wanted.

He’s pretty sure this is what’s meant to happen.

He lets it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Also want to say thank you if you read all that. More is coming, slowly but surely. I apologize for the clunky style of my writing, but this is really old! I've also started working on my last big Klaine fic, so keep yo eyes peeled for that. Thank you again for reading ♥


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